Fresh Water Adventures Grumman G-21A accident
Grumman G-21A · Accident while taxiing
From Dillingham Airport (DLG) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96LA123
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Grumman G-21A
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-21
- 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
- N4763C
- Operator
- Fresh Water Adventures
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dillingham Airport (DLG)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
- Pilot in command › Unsafe/hazardous condition, disregarded
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was returning to a gravel beach site with his amphibious airplane where he had off-loaded passengers and cargo about 1-1/2 hours earlier. He landed on an adjoining lake, and taxied up the inclined shoreline onto the beach towards where his previous load of passengers had established a camp. While taxiing on the beach, the pilot turned the airplane to the left to complete a 180-degree turn and face the lake he had just landed on. During the turn, the tail of the airplane struck one bystander, and narrowly missed another. The pilot stated that he saw several people on the beach, but did not see the individual he hit. The air taxi company's operations manual states that it is the pilot's responsibility to afford 'public protection' while the airplane is being operated in the vicinity of ground personnel.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an adequate visual lookout in order to see and avoid all ground personnel, his failure to follow company procedures and directives regarding Public Protection, and his disregard of the unsafe/hazardous conditions created by ground personnel in the intended area of taxi.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96LA123
- Event ID
- 20001208X06145
- Case number
- ANC96LA123
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- 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, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-07-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a6d3c3f609f94b16b3465fe9cc3c259aa2f168c7191ee5a04fd2ef5ecffd82d5; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:48:31.757Z.