Grant Aviation Flight 281
Cessna T207A · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Chefornak Airport (CFK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA021
- 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
Cessna T207A
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 207
- 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
- N1864
- Operator
- Grant Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Chefornak Airport (CFK), CHEFORNAK, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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
- Pilot in command › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, not performed
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Bethel, AK, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The certificated commercial pilot, with five passengers aboard, was departing runway 18 on a scheduled commuter flight. The pilot stated that the flight's original departure time was delayed for two hours due to ice fog, and low visibility. He said that just after takeoff, the engine surged followed by a loss of power. The airplane collided with snow-covered terrain during an off-airport emergency landing, and sustained substantial damage to the propeller, fuselage, and wings. Following retrieval of the airplane, an FAA airworthiness inspector examined the airplane, and found no mechanical anomalies. While still attached to the airplane, the engine was started and run at idle. The engine later produced full power on an engine test stand. A pilot-rated Alaska State Trooper, with extensive experience in the accident airplane make and model, examined the airplane soon after the accident. He said the wings, horizontal stabilizer, and elevators had an accumulation of frost.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to remove frost from the airplane prior to flight, and an inadvertent stall/mush.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA021
- Event ID
- 20001212X20189
- Case number
- ANC00LA021
- 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: c9f461b5465c0d674154d1a35fb3e8b6bef6f9600bdad55ea4336df08d52f5d9; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:50:13.071Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N1864; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, ENHA.