LAX98LA313 · Grumman HU-16C
Grumman HU-16C · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG) to Seychelles International Airport (SEZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA313
- 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
- General aviation
- 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 HU-16C
- Aircraft type
- Grumman HU-16
- 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
- N7025J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG), Flagstaff, AZTo Seychelles International Airport (SEZ)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot/owner seated in the right seat was type rated in the airplane. The second pilot in the left seat manipulating the flight controls, held an ATP and flight instructor certificates, but was not type rated in the airplane. The second pilot had a total of 1.9 hours in the airplane. Both pilots stated that they selected runway 3 for landing based on weather reports and that other airplanes were using that runway. During landing rollout, propeller reverse power was selected and the left engine came in before the right engine, which caused the airplane to veer left, and braking was used to correct the heading. The propellers were brought out of reverse and the airplane continued to exit the left side of the runway and collapsed the nose gear. The manager of the FBO said they were advising runway 21 as the active runway. The pilot of another airplane said that he had just landed on runway 21 and that there were two other airplanes in the traffic pattern for runway 21 when the accident airplane landed on runway 3. He stated that winds were 130 degrees at 14 knots and the conditions in the pattern were turbulent. The pilot noted that after he landed the wind kept shifting direction from a southeasterly to northeasterly heading. No mechanical anomalies were found during an examination of the propeller reverse system or the braking system.
Probable cause
The pilot in command's selection of the wrong runway for the prevailing wind conditions, and the second pilot's inadequate compensation for the winds. Factors in the accident were the second pilot's lack of experience in the aircraft and the pilot-in-command's inadequate supervision of the flight. Additional factors were the variable and gusty, cross wind and tail wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA313
- Event ID
- 20001211X11117
- Case number
- LAX98LA313
- 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: 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: 797824b8d7bbfe316913ec4dfee99fc2463a03010858e4215fbfcfc8f07e2add; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:39:22.779Z.