ERA21LA227 · Cessna 550 CIT. II
STB Aviation Cessna 550 CIT. II · Accident: wildlife encounter (non-bird) during takeoff
From an unrecorded airport to Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA227
- 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 550 CIT. II
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 550
- 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
- N803SC
- Operator
- STB Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE), Columbia, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 32 years (built 1989)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during takeoff, the airplane collided with two deer just after rotation. He continued the climbout and assessed that the flight controls functioned normally, but that the airplane was having issues with pressurization, and he was unable to communicate via radio. He eventually was able to contact air traffic control via mobile phone to coordinate their arrival at the destination and landed there uneventfully. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that it had sustained substantial damage to the right wing and its pressure vessel during the collision with the deer.
Probable cause
The airplane's impact with a deer during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA227
- Event ID
- 20210524103131
- Case number
- ERA21LA227
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-05-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: af3b32dd634e9b699afc0732c8c22e29ffcb0622c1e8d7ebcd556fef9e2b6cbd; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:04:45.506Z.