A video that keeps going around on social media shows an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 hitting a lot of deer on the runway while landing at Kodiak Benny Benson State Airport. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is looking into the event that happened on Thursday morning, July 24, 2025.
The video shows the plane going down and then hitting at least two deer that are on the runway as it proceeds forward. At the end of the video, the plane stops.
Media says that the pilots of Alaska Airlines Flight 231 knew there were animals on the runway and told Air Traffic Control about it before landing. After getting the go-ahead to land, the pilot was heard remarking, “There are deer on the runway.” The tower is said to have asked, “Roger, do you know where they are right now?” The pilot then said, “The intersection.”
A representative from Kodiak Benny Benson State Airport told media that an investigation of the plane “found damage to the aircraft’s main landing gear that will need to be fixed in Kodiak.” Because of this, “Passenger flights to and from Kodiak were then cancelled for the rest of Thursday, and guests were rebooked on other flights.” The crash killed the two deer.
Fortunately, no passengers or crew members were hurt in this incident, and the plane was able to taxi safely to the terminal after the crash.
Reports say that planes hitting animals are not rare in the United States. Last year, the FAA’s wildlife strike database recorded more than 22,000 of these events. There were five wildlife strikes at Kodiak Airport in 2024, and all of them involved birds. Most of the time, planes crash into birds, but in 2024, there were reports of planes hitting an alligator in Florida, a mongoose in Hawaii, and a badger in North Dakota.
The event shows how hard it is to manage wildlife around airports, especially in areas with a lot of wildlife. After this accident, the FAA and the Alaska Department of Transportation are likely to go over Kodiak Airport’s safety rules.