FTW97LA223 · Air Tractor AT-400A
Air Tractor AT-400A · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
From Earle, AR (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA223
- 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
- 0
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Air Tractor AT-400A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-400
- 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
- N3161J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Earle, AR (no airport)To not recorded
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · aerial application
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Compressor assembly, blade › Failure
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, the agricultural airplane lost power. During the forced landing, the airplane was destroyed. Wreckage examination revealed that the propeller blades were in the flat pitch range, bent straight rearward. The blades did not have a twist set nor was there leading edge damage corresponding to powered rotation at impact. Engine examination revealed that all of the blades of the compressor turbine disc were damaged or fragmented. Two of the 58 blades were found fractured at the root and several blade tips showed thermal distress. The compressor disc shroud segment had ballistic indentations corresponding to the fragmented compressor blades. Both power turbine and compressor turbine shroud segments did not show circumferential machining. The fuel filter from the high pressure fuel pump had black residues embedded throughout the filter element. All 58 blades on the compressor turbine disc had been replaced in 1991. No reference was found as to whether or not the replacement blades were new or used parts. The last recorded hot section was in December, 1994, at 7,063.2 hours TSOH. The TSOH at the time of the accident was 7,632.5 hours.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to compressor turbine blade failure. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA223
- Event ID
- 20001208X08122
- Case number
- FTW97LA223
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: 80e859c5b0ed39d3c20468ec9716c45385417aea1fbe5d9248de0c0ca8091b42; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:25:30.149Z.