SEA99LA075 · Air Tractor AT-401
Air Tractor AT-401 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From U73 · Jerome, ID to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA075
- 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-401
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-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
- N6024M
- Operator
- Spray Craft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U73 · Jerome, IDTo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed the airport, with approximately 75 gallons of fuel on board, and flew approximately 19 miles to the spray location. Approximately 45 minutes into the flight, the pilot noticed the fuel quantity gauge indication was decreasing at a higher than normal rate, and he elected to return to the airport. Eight miles from the airport, the aircraft began to lose power and the pilot elected to initiate a forced landing in an open field. During the landing roll, the aircraft struck a lava bed, causing substantial damage to the aircraft. An FAA inspector inspected the aircraft and reported that there was no evidence of fuel in the aircraft's fuel tanks. He also stated there was no evidence of a preexisting fuel leak. Post-accident inspection of the aircraft's carburetor revealed that the mixture control back-suction bleed tube in the carburetor bowl assembly was plugged. According to the certificate holder of the carburetor, a blockage of the mixture control back-suction bleed tube would result in a rich mixture situation. Normal fuel consumption for this aircraft is 32 gallons to 35 gallons per hour.
Probable cause
Fuel exhaustion. Carburetor contamination and rough terrain were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA075
- Event ID
- 20001212X18899
- Case number
- SEA99LA075
- 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: 733532e2389df8e282ee61e81548d6f0c5af9148a217fef9433289adda4467c8; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:03:51.762Z.