Fresh Water Adventures Grumman G-44 accident
Grumman G-44 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Nerka Lake, AK to Dillingham Airport (PADL)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC11LA084
- 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 G-44
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-44
- 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
- N139F
- Operator
- Fresh Water Adventures
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nerka Lake, AKTo Dillingham Airport (PADL), Dillingham, 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
- Landing · landing roll
- Defining eventThe 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, just prior to the accident landing, he had parked the amphibious airplane on a beach where, unknown to him, the left main landing gear wheel brake had apparently captured a small rock in the brake system. On landing at the destination airport, the left brake locked and the airplane departed the left side of the runway, colliding with terrain and sustaining substantial damage to the left wing. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector who went to the accident site confirmed that a small rock was found wedged in the left brake assembly.
Probable cause
A loss of directional control during landing due to a rock lodged in the main landing gear wheel brake, resulting in a runway excursion and collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC11LA084
- Event ID
- 20110822X30734
- Case number
- ANC11LA084
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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, coordinates. 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: 05e437338a102c25cf2ca48e265943d5a9e9df1b3f7bb9a98bd2cd40d4e9601e; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:38:54.071Z.