An Alaska Airlines jet sustained damage while landing in Alaska, for a rather unusual reason (thanks to James for flagging this)…
Alaska 737 strikes deer on landing, sustains gear damage
This incident happened yesterday (Thursday, July 24, 2025), and involves a one-year-old Boeing 737 MAX 8 with the registration code N801AK. The aircraft was operating flight AS231, the short 253-mile hop from Anchorage (ANC) to Kodiak (ADQ).
The 39-minute flight was routine, until it came time to land on runway 26, which is 7,534 feet long. The plane touched down, but then shortly after deploying the reverse thrusters and spoilers, the aircraft seemingly hit three deer that were on the runway. The aircraft’s landing can be seen in the below video.
The plane’s landing gear was reportedly damaged, and as a result, the aircraft has been grounded in Kodiak ever since. It remains to be seen how bad the damage is, and how long the plane will remain out of service.
What an unfortunate situation all around…
As someone who loves animals, I of course hate to see them dying in an accident like this. At the same time, once the aircraft touched down, it’s not like the pilots had much of a choice, short of potentially risking the lives of passengers, or causing much more severe damage to the plane, which could impact airport operations for a long time.
Alaska is known for its wildlife, so I do wonder if these deer just darted onto the runway out of nowhere, if there maybe weren’t sufficient runway inspections, or what. Based on the video, it looks like there’s a lot of open land around the airport.
Stuff like this does happen every so often. For example, in November 2020, an Alaska Boeing 737 hit a bear while landing in Yakutat (YAK). In that incident, the plane sustained significant damage, especially to its left engine.
Bottom line
An Alaska Boeing 737 MAX had quite a dramatic landing in Kodiak, as three deer were on the runway shortly after the plane touched down. There’s not much that could’ve been done to avoid them, and it appears that unfortunately all of them were hit.
It’s just a reminder of why Alaska is often called the Last Frontier…
What do you make of this Alaska 737 incident in Kodiak?
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