CRJ-700 damaged by deer

On a lighter note, an American Eagle CRJ-700 operating from Charlotte to Gulfport, with 44 passengers and 4 crew had to declare an emergency and return to the airport after hitting a deer on takeoff.

The crew performed a flyby of the tower, who reported a fluid trailing behind the wing. The aircraft was met by fire crews, and the passengers were bussed to the terminal. Crews are cleaning the fuel spill on the runway.

www.charlotteobserver.com...

Deer season needs to be run a little longer I guess. Never heard of a deer strike on an airplane before, but mannn ..

There have been a ton of car hits where I live this year. I can drive well under the speed limit and not foul up traffic. I see more deer than I could hope to point my guns at. Hitting a deer is nothing less than Expensive.

What do you think that's gonna cost AE ... and is there even insurance for that sort of 'accident'?

a reply to: Zaphod58

At first I though plane and deer….. "rein"deer? But it's not December

Seriously though that's kind of crazy and a first for me. Have you ever heard of such Zaphod? Was it frozen by lights maybe? Had to be a solid impact and I wonder if antlers did the damage. I wonder exactly what part of the plane it hit, the wing? Crazy it didn't get out of the way. Paralyzed by sound maybe?

a reply to: Zaphod58
OMGosh! A deer! I know what happened when I hit one with my TransAm and my husbands truck.....those damn pesky deer.

If only they would move the deer crossing to less populated areas! (I heard a tape once of someone asking them to move the signs, always cracks me up)

a reply to: Zaphod58

oh dear....


i couldn't help it

a reply to: waftist

I watched a Cessna 210 hit a doe on landing once. Nobody was hurt, but, the aircraft was severely damaged. Propeller, engine, engine mounts and nose gear all had to be replaced.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Santa was doing DT&E's with one of our Navy ships I think.

Or maybe Touch and Go's at the landing strip....

Is the deer OK? :-)

I hope it does not have a headache or something...

This happens more often then you'd think. Search for pics and videos, there's a video of one incident I've seen.

a reply to: Snarl

At the very least they're going to have to reskin at least part of the wing, and that's minimum. They're going to have to NDI the spar and ribs in the wing, depending on where it hit. This is gonna be expensive to fix, but it is fixable.

I was on one. Caro Michigan about 1992 coming in in a twin engine corporate plane from Minneapolis. Had to fly to Saginaw to land after the hit. No dead deer on the runway and everything looked fine. Nothing like coming in to land and there's red flashing lights everywhere and they are for you.

Corporate travel is so exciting
Now they have like an 8 foot fence around the place

a reply to: waftist

This is actually fairly minor. I've heard of more than one aircraft that had to be scrapped after a run in with an animal. After the Indonesia tsunami, a Garuda 737 full of cargo was landing at one of the only open airfields, and hit a water buffalo on rollout.

Hmm might seem a silly question but the airport looks relatively large so I'd assume that it has some sort of perimeter fence. So firstly how does a deer get onto the airfield without being noticed and two, I thought most large airport ls had some sort of ground staff to keep an eye on foreign objects including animals near the runway? Just curious

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

They usually are looking for birds, not larger animals like deer, and the sweeps are periodic, so it may have gotten to the runway between sweeps.

The fence may be damaged, or run through a wooded area, and the deer have found a way through.

a reply to: Zaphod58 Seems a bit bad really surely constant checks on fences would be a main job for someone especially with the risk of possible intruders to enter the airfield. Also if the area is known to have deer I'd thought they pay more attention as to what wildlife might affect the airfield

Then again I don't know the area and don't know much about airfield security just seems a little crazy. Either way it could of been worse just glad everyone was ok

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

They check the fences every so often. Wildlife generally will find a way through if it really wants to.

I remember watching the Florida Air National Guard F-16 hit a wild sow and her piglets at Jacksonville Airport in 1988. The nose gear collapsed and the plane went into the trees. The pilot ejected and was uninjured.

I caught a video on LL some months back of a smaller prop plane's gear smashing a deer on landing. Either way, glad they got the bird down.

A deer is pretty soft compared to a pig. when we finally landed in Saginaw we had to wait for a ride to come get us so I wandered around a bit it was late just getting dark and the place was empty. So I wandered up to the tower and found a guy to ask how they determined we could land . He showed me some huge binoculars and said they just looked as we circled and burned off fuel.

The next day at work the 5 of us only could just look at each other and shake our heads

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

Not sure how tall the perimeter fence is but white tail deer can jump a fence up to around 8 feet tall, taller if the fence is on a slope and they are on the high ground.