Katmai Air Cessna T207A accident
Cessna T207A · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From King Salmon, AK to Brooks Camp, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC13LA066
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N499K
- Operator
- Katmai Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From King Salmon, AKTo Brooks Camp, 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a scheduled commuter flight with six passengers on board the float-equipped airplane. The pilot began the takeoff going up the left side of the river and was aware of boats on the right side of the river. The pilot brought the airplane to the step-taxi position and then backed off the power with the intent to apply full power and take off once the airplane was past the boats. The airplane subsequently struck an18.5-ft open fishing boat and nosed over inverted in the water. The pilot and the passengers reported that they never saw the boat that the airplane hit.
The boat operator reported that the boat was idling in neutral as it drifted downriver when he heard and then saw the airplane coming straight toward his boat. The boat operator put the boat into reverse to try to avoid the collision, but, as he backed the boat away, the airplane struck the front right side of it with its left float.
The pilot noted that the boat (which was small and olive-drab colored) may have visually blended with other boats and seaplanes parked along the side of the river, and the boat operator said that seaplanes were sometimes difficult to hear when coming from downriver. Both the pilot and the boat operator were familiar with operating in the multiple-use waterway, and each of them were aware of the presence of both seaplane and boat traffic on the morning of the accident. There are no separate designated areas for seaplane traffic and boat traffic in the area in which the accident occurred, and there is no radio contact between the pilots and the boat operators. Although regulations specify right-of-way rules for aircraft and vessels conducting water operations and provide course alteration rules based on their respective positions, the pilot never saw the boat to determine its relative position, and, by the time the boat operator saw the airplane's position, the collision was imminent.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate visual lookout while departing from a multiple-use waterway, which resulted in a collision with a drifting boat. Contributing to the accident were the lack of visual conspicuity of the boat and the limited amount of time the boat operator had to maneuver the boat once he heard and saw the oncoming airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC13LA066
- Event ID
- 20130722X94513
- Case number
- ANC13LA066
- 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: 57045f8cbbed33f5e042915bdc3c0df00f4a4016e96ee7f2adb590875467cf81; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:17:25.699Z.