Not sure what your assertion is here but just to be clear neither pilot saw the deer. They heard a loud bang and thought that they may have blown a tire. It's my understanding that they also received a "flap fail" indication when they went to retract the flaps. It wasn't until ATC advised them that a subsequent aircraft, on takeoff, reported a dead deer on the runway that they became aware that they MAY have hit a deer. And even THEN, they didn't know what was damaged or IF there was any damage. They certainly didn't know that the wing was damaged or that they were losing fuel. An interesting note here: the airplane reportedly handled/flew perfectly normally with the damaged right wing, so I can only guess that the crew had no reason to believe that ANY portion of the airframe had been severely damaged or that they were losing fuel. It should also be noted that the crew actually did a tower fly-by so someone could take a look at the gear prior to landing, which suggests to me that the crew was still of the mindset that they had a tire/gear problem.

For those of you who have never flown a CRJ, it's worth noting that neither pilot can see either wing (or landing gear) from the flight deck. The only portion of the wing that they can possibly see is the winglet, and even THAT is difficult. So there was no way for the pilots to see that the wing was damaged and fuel was leaking, from the cockpit, if that was your assertion.


My guess is that the headlines would be much more grave and a lot of family and friends would be grief stricken today.