MIA98LA061 · Air Tractor AT-602
Air Tractor AT-602 · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA98LA061
- 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-602
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-602
- 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
- N50929
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that after the engine was started, he remained on the ground about 45 minutes with it running while looking over charts, and also to eliminate frost which was on the wings. He also parked the airplane the night before so as to have the sun contact the wings to eliminate the frost. He then maneuvered the airplane onto the runway and when he applied full power, the engine torque was at the upper red line. About 1/2 way down the runway, he noted that the airplane was not accelerating as it had the day before, and with insufficient runway remaining to stop, he continued the takeoff. The airplane lifted off the ground then rolled to the left, impacted the ground, and rolled inverted. The pilot experienced difficulty in exiting the airplane out the left cockpit door and was assisted by ground personnel. His injuries included fractured vertabrae. Post accident examination of the left cockpit door emergency release assembly revealed that the forward hinge was slight dented, no other discrepancies were noted. The engine was removed from the airplane and sent to the manufacturers facility for further examination, which revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain airspeed (Vs) resulting in the inadvertent stall during the initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98LA061
- Event ID
- 20001211X09485
- Case number
- MIA98LA061
- 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: e6253ffd0693b5f87859671814d6eb846304bb945e7cff1f011f37af1740f2b2; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:38:35.812Z.