ERA23LA152 · Cessna 172 H
Mast Aviation Cessna 172 H · Accident: wildlife encounter (non-bird) during takeoff
From William M Tuck Airport (W78) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA152
- 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 H
- 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
- N2527L
- Operator
- Mast Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William M Tuck Airport (W78), South Boston, VATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1966)
- 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 flight instructor reported that while performing a touch-and-go landing at night, just prior to rotation speed, the pilot receiving instruction noticed a deer coming from the infield area. The flight instructor also saw a deer and heard a “clump” noise. The flight instructor reduced the engine power to idle and exited the runway. After taxiing to the ramp, the pilot and flight instructor noted damage to the airplane and subsequently airport operations personnel found one deceased and one injured deer near the landing runway. The deer strike resulted in substantial damage to the left horizontal stabilizer. The flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The airplane’s impact with two deer while performing a takeoff at night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA152
- Event ID
- 20230315106900
- Case number
- ERA23LA152
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c353111b71317e5782b2514a1536c680bf120d84009e891233efe8f2df50af10; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:25:45.858Z.