ATL99LA014 · Air Tractor AT-301
Air Tractor AT-301 · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From 2J5 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99LA014
- 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
- N8770S
- Operator
- Richard L. Hilde · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2J5To 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Carburetor heat, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he was on an approach to land at the staging airstrip when he noticed that the ground crew had positioned another airplane 2000 feet down the runway. The pilot said that his landing airspeed was a little fast, so to assure a safe clearance, he elected to execute a go-around. When the pilot advanced the throttle for the go-around, the engine spit and sputtered, and lost power. As the pilot maneuvered for a forced landing, the left wing collided with a fence post. The airplane subsequently yawed left, slid on the ground, and collided with trees on the departure end of the extended runway center line. The pilot also stated that he did not apply carburetor heat unless temperatures were 70 degrees Fahrenheit or below. During the examination of the engine, the spark plugs were removed from the engine and found to be sooted. A review of the weather data disclosed that conditions were favorable for the formation of carburetor icing.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO USE CARBURETOR HEAT. FACTORS WERE CONDITIONS FAVORABLE FOR THE FORMATION OF CARBURETOR ICE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99LA014
- Event ID
- 20001211X11365
- Case number
- ATL99LA014
- 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: c967f61d876b23cd8d8a084c1b8c7f8a3e7fb2d03223f99fbf5efd5366348ab7; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:21:46.923Z.