MIA97LA208 · Air Tractor AT-401
Air Tractor AT-401 · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From AdventHealth Sandlake Helistop (22FL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97LA208
- 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-401
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-401
- 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
- N1509C
- Operator
- Donald Johnson
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From AdventHealth Sandlake Helistop (22FL)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
- Initial climb
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Impairment(alcohol)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight was taking off on a runway that was part asphalt and part grass. The takeoff roll was started on the asphalt, and when the airplane reached the grass part of the runway, the pilot said he attempted to 'dump' the chemicals about 100 feet from the end of the runway, because the airplane would not come off the ground. The pilot was interviewed at his home by the Sheriff, and said; '...upon taking off, the plane would just not get up...he flew the plane earlier without a problem...when he dumped the load of chemicals on the runway, the plane went up, hit the top of a power pole with a wing and then went down into small pines....' The FAA inspector's reported stated that pilot said 'he had problems with aircraft performance on climbout.' Examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any discrepancies. Several witnesses ran to the crash to aid the pilot, and they stated that when they reach the pilot they saw that he 'staggered and smelled of alcohol.' The witnesses said they did not see him consume anything before he got into a car 'Bronco' and leave the scene. A test taken in the hospital about 2 hours after the accident showed an ethanol level of 143 mg/dl in the pilot's blood.
Probable cause
the pilot's impairment of judgment and performance due to alcohol which led to his failure to maintain control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97LA208
- Event ID
- 20001208X08464
- Case number
- MIA97LA208
- 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: 5695cefacd505c53d9c4e496286efccd4806b10687c65a4f9c4c7916c7f17e88; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:21:46.088Z.