PenAir Flight 325
Grumman G21 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Akutan Seaplane Base (KQA) to Tom Madsen (Dutch Harbor) Airport (DUT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04LA038
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 G21
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G21
- 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
- N22932
- Operator
- PenAir
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Akutan Seaplane Base (KQA), Akutan, AKTo Tom Madsen (Dutch Harbor) Airport (DUT)
- 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
- 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 › Ground loop/swerve, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A recently qualified captain was landing an amphibious, tailwheel airplane in a near direct crosswind of 7 gusting to 14 knots on a hard-surfaced runway at the conclusion of a scheduled commuter airline flight. The new captain (second pilot) was being observed and trained by the pilot-in-command check airman, who occupied the right seat pilot station. The right seat station was equipped with all flight controls, but did not have brake pedals. During the landing roll, the airplane ground looped to the right, and the left main landing gear collapsed, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. A review of the second pilot's training records and interviews with FAA personnel, disclosed that the second pilot had not received adequate transition training to the accident type airplane, and had a total of 1.8 hours in the accident type airplane at the time of the accident, which included all training and a flight check. The second pilot had accrued about 7 hours of tailwheel experience over 7 years prior to beginning his training on the accident type airplane. His received only 3 wheel landings, instead of the minimum of 12, in the accident type airplane during his transition training. Postaccident inspection of the airplane and maintenance records disclosed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical problems.
Probable cause
The inadvertent ground loop/swerve by the second pilot during the landing roll, and the first (check) pilot's inadequate supervision of the second pilot, which resulted in a loss of control and substantial damage to the airplane. Factors associated with the accident are the second pilot's improper upgrade/transition training by the company check airman, the second pilot's lack of experience in the accident type airplane, the operator's lack of surveillance of the training process, and a crosswind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04LA038
- Event ID
- 20040409X00437
- Case number
- ANC04LA038
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-04-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2e6e0d9d608fbee05ed47452ba84f43b57a3dcb77afd13f553b89f666718a882; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:27:57.545Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N22932; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.