FTW98LA267 · Air Tractor AT-502B
Air Tractor AT-502B · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From 6T4 · TX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA267
- 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-502B
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-502
- 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
- N6107W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 6T4 · TXTo 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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 on ground/water
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he lost control of the airplane while landing to the east on a crowned, narrow dirt airstrip that was further confined by an electric fence running paralleled to the airstrip. The pilot added that a windsock was not available at the airstrip; however, he was aware that the intensity of the wind continued to increase during the day as the temperature increased and the air became more unstable. A 'brisk crosswind prevailed from his right,' and dust devils were prevalent throughout the area when the pilot was executed his ninth landing of the day at the airstrip. The pilot added that after 'touching down normally,' the airplane drifted off the centerline of the airstrip towards the left edge of the runway. The pilot was unable to correct for the drift, and the left main wheel impacted a mount of dirt on the edge of the strip. The airplane nosed over coming to rest in the inverted position. The winds at the Victoria Airport, located 21 miles southeast of the accident site, were reported from 180 degrees at 18 knots, gusting to 23 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the existing wind conditions. Factors were the crosswind, the dust devils, and the confined landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA267
- Event ID
- 20001211X10313
- Case number
- FTW98LA267
- 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: c35ee02e9fd3fcb58edc4c0af368ee376e2f99ad676e45cb1fcddb55e9931f38; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:41:10.604Z.