ERA11CA072 · Piper PA-28-140
Piper PA-28-140 · Accident: wildlife encounter (non-bird) during landing
From Somerset Airport (SMQ) to Aeroflex-Andover Airport (12N)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA072
- 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-28-140
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N15499
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Somerset Airport (SMQ), Somerset, NJTo Aeroflex-Andover Airport (12N), Andover, NJ
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Wildlife encounter (non-bird)
- 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
According to the pilot, the airplane was on final approach with the runway lights and airplane landing lights illuminated. During the landing flare, he heard a "bang" from the right side of the airplane. As the airplane continued on the landing rollout, the right wing settled onto the ground. The airplane veered to the right and came to rest on the edge of the runway surface. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the right main landing gear was separated, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing spar. The separated right main landing gear was located on the runway adjacent to a dead deer. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical anomalies with the airplane prior to it colliding with the deer.
Probable cause
An inadvertent collision with a deer on the runway during a night landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11CA072
- Event ID
- 20101125X55713
- Case number
- ERA11CA072
- 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: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ff128fc4c0f326ee547dad3800f089261123c2687280aef2e10c9d830992be6e; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:35:06.018Z.