FTW97LA317 · Air Tractor AT-301
Air Tractor AT-301 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From FO5 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA317
- 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-301
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-301
- 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
- N2316X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FO5To 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was flying a swath run over a cotton field at dusk, when his airplane's engine 'lost most of its power.' He stated that he tried to land straight ahead, but 'had to pop-up over a road into the next field.' The next field was terraced. During the landing, the airplane impacted a terrace, which 'flipped the airplane over on its back.' The farmer, whose field was being sprayed, reported to the pilot that 'there was a vertical piece of irrigation pipe in the field that was bent.' The repair facility, where the engine was sent, reported that the number 5 cylinder had received damage when it was 'apparently struck or hit by something.'
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain clearance from an irrigation pipe. Factors relating to the accident were: the poor light condition at dusk, the object (vertical piece of irragation pipe), loss of engine power from foreign object damage, and the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA317
- Event ID
- 20001208X08629
- Case number
- FTW97LA317
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-08-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c9d664ec9aed274b4af58f114785bfaa9dd6b206a20b20d41a3e7d5b4b26f8b9; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:48:22.808Z.