Westwind Aviation Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: ground handling event while taxiing
From Grand Canyon West Airport (1G4) to Sedona Airport (SEZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA207
- 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
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
- N786WW
- Operator
- Westwind Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Canyon West Airport (1G4), Peach Springs, AZTo Sedona Airport (SEZ), Sedona, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Taxi
- 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
- Ground handling event
- 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
- Pole
- 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 reported that, while taxiing after landing, he was instructed by the ground controller to follow a truck to transient parking. A fly-in car show event was taking place at the time, and several areas on the ramp were occupied by the show. With a wing walker on the right wing, he followed the truck and moved left of the taxiway centerline to avoid getting too close to the airplanes to the right that overhung into the taxiway. After the airplane was clear of the airplanes to the right, the pilot advanced the throttle and the left wing impacted a light pole, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from a light pole while taxiing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA207
- Event ID
- 20170916X21511
- Case number
- WPR17LA207
- 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: 4d5b02a1cad47a34d743a58c139a2d5cfe80f55da191471238fcdf584f0255f0; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:51:05.582Z.