DEN99LA149 · Air Tractor AT-402A
Air Tractor AT-402A · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From CARRERA AIRPARK, CO (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA149
- 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-402A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-402
- 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
- N402RE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From CARRERA AIRPARK, CO (no airport)To 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed an aerial spray of a field with insecticides and was returning for landing at the privately-owned airstrip. While 100 ft. agl, the pilot reported a loss of engine power and the aircraft landed in a field of 6-foot tall corn stalks 150 yards short of the runway. Following the accident, the aircraft's engine was disassembled and examined, then reassembled and run in a test cell. No abnormalities or discrepancies were found that would have interfered with normal engine operation. An examination of the aircraft's propeller blades revealed that each of the propeller blades were bent in the reverse direction. The power lever in the aircraft is designed with a beta mode in which the pilot can manually pull the throttle rearward with corresponding negative blade angles. It takes between 3 to 6 seconds for the engine to respond to increased engine power input. The Airplane Flight Manual for the aircraft states that during approach to landing, the pilot is instructed to adjust the power lever to provide the required rate of descent, to 'not move [the] power lever below the idle stop position,' and to verify that the beta light is out.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow proper approach to landing procedures as outlined in the Airplane Flight Manual. A factor was the 6-foot tall corn stalks.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA149
- Event ID
- 20001212X19493
- Case number
- DEN99LA149
- 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: d74ba3cb2d72e5da2493edbeb803f210423820728952ed4dae058b75f87ff0e5; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:18:55.126Z.