GAA16CA314 · Piper PA 32 300
Piper PA 32 300 · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Ocean County Airport (MJX) to Lincoln Park Airport (N07)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA314
- 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 32 300
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- 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
- N31396
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ocean County Airport (MJX), Toms River, NJTo Lincoln Park Airport (N07), Lincoln Park, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1978)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Landing gear collapse
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot in command (PIC) reported that he executed a normal approach, following an instrument proficiency check. He reported that during the landing flare the flight instructor, "grabbed the yoke and pulled up," and he heard a loud thump. The PIC reported that he thought the flight instructor was performing a go around, however the flight instructor said, "we hit a deer and must not go around." The airplane settled to the runway, the right wing "dipped onto the ground" and slid to a stop. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the right main landing gear attachment point.
The PIC reported that he exited the airplane and saw the right main landing gear and the deer on the runway near the intended touchdown point.
The pilots reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with any portion of the airplane prior to striking the deer.
Probable cause
The airplane struck a deer during the landing flare resulting in substantial damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA314
- Event ID
- 20160613X21931
- Case number
- GAA16CA314
- 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. 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: 9ade49f7d5fb70d333cc9b721dea6b8a4f40d07cb065348385701982bbe29fc3; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:29:50.832Z.