Grant Aviation Beech G18S accident
Beech G18S · Accident: propeller failure/malfunction en route
From Nome Airport (OME) to Gambell Airport (GAM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA046
- 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
Beech G18S
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 18
- 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
- N555CG
- Operator
- Grant Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nome Airport (OME)To Gambell Airport (GAM), GAMBLE, AK
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Propeller failure/malfunction
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after reaching cruise altitude, the pilot heard a loud noise and felt a vibration in the left engine. He shut the left engine down, and returned to his departure airport. Upon landing, it was discovered that approximately eight inches of a propeller blade tip attached to the left engine had separated and impacted the nose section of the airplane. The blade tip damaged a former in the nose, and then traveled into the right engine nacelle. A small nick was observed on the remaining blade surface that coincided with the fracture plane.
Probable cause
fracture of a propeller blade tip.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA046
- Event ID
- 20001208X07481
- Case number
- ANC97LA046
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1d77e70fa8d72fbdd5090968fb9a8afbb5fb18eb5f3427eefd4e21535f7bc96b; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:40:48.716Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N555CG; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, ENHA.