FTW00LA168 · Air Tractor AT-301
Air Tractor AT-301 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA168
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N8886S
- 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
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Ignition system, magneto › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot had dispensed his 4th load of fertilizer for the day and was returning to the airstrip, when he reported a vibration, followed by a loss of engine power. During the forced landing, another pilot observed the airplane hit a ditch between two rice fields, and then nose over. The integrity of the fuel system was not compromised during the impact sequence. There was no evidence of fuel found at the accident site during an examination the day after the accident. Fuel stains were found on the bottom of the right wing. During an engine test run, the engine ran rough, backfiring, and cutting out momentarily throughout the normal power range. When the engine was run at power, on only the left magneto, the engine maintained 28 inches of manifold pressure at 2,000 RPM; however, it would still cut out from time to time. Removal and examination of the right magneto revealed that the internal brass gear splines were worn and brass particles were scattered within the magneto. Removal, bench testing, and examination of the carburetor revealed that the float movement was rough, the orifice of the float valve was too large, the float was set too low, and the accelerator pump did not work well. The carburetor had been removed, overhauled, reinstalled, and returned to service approximately 3 weeks prior to the accident. The seat belt and shoulder harness were found fastened, and the pilot was wearing his helmet. The curved overturn tube, located in the upper portion of the cockpit, was crushed inward. According to the manufacturer representative, a service bulletin was issued on March 23, 1991, for the installation of a cockpit overturn skid plate as an added safety feature. The skid plate had not been installed in the accident aircraft.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power in cruise flight as a result of the failure of the right magneto. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA168
- Event ID
- 20001212X21222
- Case number
- FTW00LA168
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-06-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 16b759aabecff14598d3fdc9b771bba06b439c282fa6ca8a43ae2e5752e202f6; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:11:00.422Z.