ATL98LA117 · Air Tractor 401
Air Tractor 401 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL98LA117
- 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 401
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor 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
- N10103
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Malfunction
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had been flying about forty five minutes on this load of fuel, and estimated that he had in excess of one hour of fuel remaining. While on the first swath run climb out from a field, the engine lost power. The pilot also reported that as the engine lost power, black smoke was seen coming from the exhaust. According to the pilot, the only available emergency landing area was straight ahead. During the post-accident examination of the engine assembly, the engine was started, it ran roughly, and produced black smoke. Further examination disclosed that fuel pressure supplied by the engine driven fuel pump was not being maintained in the pressure carburetor. According to a local mechanic assisting in the examination, the loss of fuel pressure in the carburetor is normally associated with a defective needle assembly in the carburetor. According to the operator, the maintenance records showed that the engine assembly had accumulated 1150 hours of service since the last overhaul. The recommended time between engine overhauls is 1200 hours. The engine maintenance records also failed to show if the carburetor had been overhauled since the last engine overhaul.
Probable cause
The malfunction of the carburetor which resulted in improper fuel flow to the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL98LA117
- Event ID
- 20001211X10772
- Case number
- ATL98LA117
- 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: 94af3ccba953b424fa6a45a07dd34c4339d4c6e149b54a3bdf418c85da31e809; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:02:42.269Z.