ERA25LA375 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: wildlife encounter (non-bird) during landing
From Punxsutawney Municipal Airport (N35) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA375
- 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
- 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
- N6703A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Punxsutawney Municipal Airport (N35), Punxsutawney, PATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1956)
- 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
- 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
Immediately after touchdown on the runway, the pilot noticed a large deer running in his peripheral vision. The deer contacted the left side of the airplane, which pushed it abruptly toward the left. The pilot steered the airplane to prevent a runway excursion, exited the runway, and parked the airplane. The pilot was unable to exit the pilot’s (left) side door, due to damage preventing it from opening. He exited from the right-side door without issue. The pilot was uninjured. The airplane’s left wing and fuselage were substantially damaged. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The airplane’s collision with a deer on a runway during landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA375
- Event ID
- 20251002201771
- Case number
- ERA25LA375
- 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: 96ac5dab69b86867534ef49f496bd45a0ec328c158d80536f79424ce152ff85c; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:25:05.921Z.