ERA10LA247 · Piper PA 46-350P
Piper PA 46-350P · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during takeoff
From Oconee County Regional Airport (CEU) to Smith Reynolds Airport (INT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA247
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA 46-350P
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-46
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N364ST
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oconee County Regional Airport (CEU), Clemson, SCTo Smith Reynolds Airport (INT), Winston-Salem, NC
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Takeoff
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the night takeoff roll, at an airspeed of about 60 knots, the pilot observed four to six brown animals traveling from left to right across the airplane's path. He felt a thump on the left side of the airplane, and he pulled back on the control column. The airplane became airborne and then another collision was felt. The pilot continued to increase the back pressure, but noticed that the airspeed was decreasing, and the stall warning horn was sounding. In response, he then reduced the back pressure. The airplane touched down on the main landing gear and pitched down until the propeller and fuselage contacted the runway. The airplane veered to the right and came to rest off the side of the runway. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that it struck several deer during the takeoff roll, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane. A wooded area of approximately 60 acres bounded the north side of the airport; it was not owned by the airport, and no fence separated the two. The airport director stated that deer regularly come on airport property to feed on the vegetation growing around the runway. He possessed a deer depredation permit to help eliminate deer strikes, but runway construction had temporarily precluded that activity. Information about the potential for the presence of deer at the airport was not incorporated into the airport's automated surface observing system (ASOS) broadcasts. The airport director was also attempting to obtain funding for a fence along the northern boundary of the airport. Subsequent to the accident, the text "Deer on and Inv of rwy" was added the Airport Remarks section of the airport's entry in the FAA Airport/Facility Directory.
Probable cause
The airplane's inadvertent collision with deer during a night takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the lack of a deer barrier between the airport and an adjacent wooded area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA247
- Event ID
- 20100428X51555
- Case number
- ERA10LA247
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-04-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 33eb2d38a25520f3d5f0984f258bfa7864b5026cf4b5c5633e11133a261a6f05; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:56:28.039Z.