Grant Aviation Cessna 208B accident
Cessna 208B · Accident: loss of control on ground while taxiing
From an unrecorded airport to Bethel Airport (BET)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC21LA025
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- N407GV
- Operator
- Grant Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Bethel Airport (BET), Bethel, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1997)
- 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 · into takeoff position
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while back-taxiing for departure, on a snow-and-ice-covered runway in a strong crosswind, the airplane began to slide towards the left side of the runway. He corrected for the slide back towards the runway center line, but the airplane encountered a “violent gust of wind” and began to slide again. He applied right brake and right rudder while leaving in full right aileron, but the airplane had zero braking action. As the airplane continued to slide, he applied engine power in an attempt to increase the rudder authority and “correct the direction back towards the runway” to no avail. Subsequently, the airplane slid off the left side of the runway, the left wheel impacted a snowbank, and the airplane “tipped” to the left. The airplane came to rest in a nose down attitude, banked to the left at about a 40° angle, and sustained substantial damage to the left wing and aileron.
The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot added that the weather at the accident airport, about the time of the accident, was wind from 120° at 20 knots. The pilot was back taxiing on runway 20.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of directional control during the back-taxi for departure in strong crosswind conditions which resulted in a runway excursion. Contributing to the accident was the snow-and-ice-covered runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC21LA025
- Event ID
- 20210316102764
- Case number
- ANC21LA025
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-03-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f0f9630c6a8ad04f2e5e99f743504bb6ea7af55ed30bf283a28f150c71365ca0; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:49:59.744Z.