GAA18CA420 · Cirrus SR22
Ginther Associates Cirrus SR22 · Accident: wildlife encounter (non-bird) during landing
From College Park Airport (CGS) to Columbia County Airport (1B1)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA420
- 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
Cirrus SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N615EM
- Operator
- Ginther Associates
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From College Park Airport (CGS), College Park, MDTo Columbia County Airport (1B1), Hudson, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, following a night visual flight rules cross-country flight, he overflew the destination airport at 1,500 ft above ground level and set up a normal approach. Just before touchdown, he saw a deer walk onto the runway from the right and collide with the left main landing gear, which then separated from the airplane. As the airplane settled, the left wing struck the runway, and the airplane veered left. The airplane exited the left side of the runway and collided with a drainage culvert.
The airplane sustained substantial damage the left wing spar and the left main landing gear attachment points.
The airport facility directory did not contain a note to caution that deer were in the vicinity of the airport.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
Collision with a deer during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA420
- Event ID
- 20180630X43750
- Case number
- GAA18CA420
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-06-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ef73941c563989d06ac9e8d00686ca02798af5430d8542c7043a82e9f9635494; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:42:48.990Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. 1B1 is Columbia County Airport in Hudson, New York; the event location and coordinates (42.291389, -73.710281) are Hudson, NY, so the state code NE is wrong.