FTW00LA024 · Cessna A188B
Cessna A188B · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Hamilton Aircraft, Inc Airport (5TA0) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA024
- 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
Cessna A188B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 188
- 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
- N72062
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hamilton Aircraft, Inc Airport (5TA0)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
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The agricultural airplane collided with two powerlines suspended approximately 20 feet above cotton fields in a north-south direction. The pilot reported that he was in the process of aligning the SATLOC equipped airplane for the first pass on the 320-acre field that he intended to spray. The pilot was on a westerly heading 'over a brownish colored matured cotton field and he never saw the dull aluminum wires' that the airplane collided with. The pilot added that the two electrical wires were severed after impacting the top of the windshield, the upper portion of the vertical stabilizer, and the rudder assembly. The rudder assembly was partially ripped from its mounts and jammed 'in a marked right rudder deflection.' After flying through the powerlines, the pilot attempted to continue straight ahead on a westerly heading; however, the rudder was pulling the airplane into a right turn, which he could not control with full opposite aileron. The pilot stated that when he could no longer maintain control of the airplane, he extended the flaps and 'crashed into a cotton field in a right wing low attitude.'
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with the powerlines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA024
- Event ID
- 20001212X20099
- Case number
- FTW00LA024
- 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: dd4ff05231c1b6353ca2359e48c9cbe56f385ca37ab4bb63844516813a7bfade; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:44:56.464Z.