CEN20LA431 · Cessna 172 K
Cessna 172 K · Accident: wildlife encounter (non-bird) during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Lakeview-Airport-Griffith Field (13C)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA431
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Cessna 172 K
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N79300
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Lakeview-Airport-Griffith Field (13C), Lakeview, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1969)
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructor pilot reported that the pilot was taking off following a night touch and go landing when he and the pilot heard a loud thump and the airplane yawed strongly to the left. The instructor pilot took control of the airplane, continued the takeoff, brought the airplane back to the airport, and landed uneventfully. As the instructor pilot was taxiing the airplane to the ramp, both he and the pilot saw several deer adjacent to the runway. A postaccident examination revealed the airplane sustained substantial damage to the right horizontal stabilizer and elevator, and aft fuselage. The following morning a 100-pound deceased deer was found about 80 yards south of the departure runway. The pilot reported there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The damage the airplane sustained was consistent with a deer strike.
Probable cause
The airplane’s impact with a deer during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA431
- Event ID
- 20201005102083
- Case number
- CEN20LA431
- 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, cause areas. 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: f3ccfd936d220354ead44d0f238ab0cc04bee115a452a2a3617c93e9ab9c950b; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:10:35.608Z.