CEN26LA035 · Cessna 172 M
Cessna 172 M · Accident: wildlife encounter (non-bird) during landing
From Ely Municipal Airport (ELO) to Grantsburg Municipal Airport (GTG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA035
- 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
- 0
- 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 M
- 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
- N9490H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ely Municipal Airport (ELO), Ely, MNTo Grantsburg Municipal Airport (GTG), Grantsburg, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1975)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the airplane was on final approach to the runway in dark night visual conditions with no moon illumination present. She observed that the airport lighting seemed dim and the area surrounding the runway was not illuminated. When she initiated the landing flare, she observed a white-tailed deer running across the runway from the right to the left. She initiated a go-around; however, the deer impacted the right horizontal stabilizer. During the go-around, she noticed a reduced climb performance and a right yaw, however she was able to safely control the airplane. She decided to divert to a different airport due to the possibility of additional deer being present near the runway or perhaps a dead deer on the runway. The pilot contacted air traffic control and landed at a nearby airport without further incident.
The right horizontal stabilizer sustained substantial damage. The pilot reported there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or the engine that would have precluded normal operation. The current airport entry in the FAA Airport/Facility Directory states in the remarks section, “deer & waterfowl on and invof arpt.” According to the University of Wisconsin, white-tail deer prefer an open forest environment consisting of meadows, woodland clearings and farmland and additionally prefer low light to forage, mainly at sunrise and sunset. The accident occurred about 1 hour and 38 minutes after sunset.
The publicly owned airport, which is located next to a 30,000-acre state wildlife area, does not have fencing installed to exclude deer and other mammals, nor is it required to. The FAA has published CertAlert 16-03 Recommended Wildlife Exclusion Fencing and states in part:
Proper fencing is the best way of keeping deer and coyotes off aircraft movement areas.
The FAA recommends a 10-foot fence with 3-strand barbed wire outriggers.
Probable cause
The collision with a white-tail deer during the landing in dark night visual conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA035
- Event ID
- 20251105201961
- Case number
- CEN26LA035
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2025-11-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 225bed8fbfa4bb8065947b7d6b531ba9600f8037af8e19632556f3085ebd897d; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:31:28.728Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Wrong state; GTG is Grantsburg Municipal Airport, Grantsburg, Wisconsin, which is also the recorded accident location.