Grant Aviation Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B and Ryan Air Cessna T207A · Accident: midair collision while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC11FA091
- 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
- 1 · 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
Aircraft 1 · Cessna 208B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 208
- 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
- N207DR
- Operator
- Grant Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Toksook Bay Airport (OOK), Toksook Bay, AKTo Bethel Airport (BET), Bethel, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Aircraft 2 · 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
- N73789
- Operator
- Ryan Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Livengood Camp Airport (4AK), Tununak, AKTo Bethel Airport (BET), Bethel, 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Off-field or emergency landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A Cessna 208B and a Cessna 207 collided in flight in daylight visual meteorological conditions. The Cessna 208B and the Cessna 207 were both traveling in an easterly direction. According to the Cessna 207 pilot, the airplanes departed from two neighboring remote Alaskan villages about the same time, and both airplanes were flying along similar flight routes. While en route, the Cessna 207 pilot talked with the Cessna 208B pilot on a prearranged, discreet radio frequency, and the two agreed to meet up in flight for the return to their home airport. The Cessna 207 pilot said that the pilot of the Cessna 208B flew his airplane along the left side of her airplane while she was in level cruise flight at 1,200 feet mean sea level and that they continued to talk via the radio. Then, unexpectedly and unannounced, the pilot of the Cessna 208B maneuvered his airplane above and over the top of her airplane. She said that she immediately told the Cessna 208B pilot that she could not see him and that she was concerned about where he was. She said that the Cessna 208B pilot then said, in part: "Whatever you do, don't pitch up." The next thing she recalled was seeing the wings and cockpit of the descending Cessna 208B pass by the right side of her airplane, which was instantly followed by an impact with her airplane's right wing. She said that after the collision, the Cessna 208B passed underneath her airplane from right-to-left before beginning a gradual descent that steepened as the airplane continued to the left. It then entered a steep, vertical, nose-down descent before colliding with the tundra-covered terrain below followed by a postcrash fire. Unable to maintain level cruise flight, the Cessna 207 pilot selected an area of rolling, tundra-covered terrain as a forced landing site.
An examination of both airplanes revealed impact signatures consistent with the Cessna 208B's vertical stabilizer impacting the Cessna 207's right wing. A portion of crushed and distorted wreckage, identified as part of the Cessna 208B's vertical stabilizer assembly, was found embedded in the Cessna 207's right wing. The Cessna 208B's severed vertical stabilizer and rudder were found about 1,000 feet west of the Cessna 208B's crash site.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate clearance while performing an unexpected and unannounced abrupt maneuver, resulting in a midair collision between the two airplanes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC11FA091
- Event ID
- 20110904X00636
- Case number
- ANC11FA091
- 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. 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: 2c7f38e92fa8b2803a7135be8457f8e22757b7f8d5782eccf3768322825a8516; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:06:26.877Z.