MIA00LA237 · Air Tractor 502B
Air Tractor 502B · Accident: overrun during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA237
- 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 502B
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor 502
- 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
- N90158
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 › Aircraft weight and balance, not performed
- Spray/dusting equipment › Overload
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he loaded the aircraft with 450 gallons of chemicals, adding, '...that's the load I used (sic) carry,' and took off towards the east on a 2,600 feet long airstrip. He noticed, '...that the tail did not get up after more than half way of the takeoff roll.' He then put the flaps in the full down position, and he started working with the trim, trying to raise the tail. He also stated that the airplane was never airborne, and the right wheel and the right wing hit the soybeans. The nose went down, the propeller hit the ground, the aircraft made a right turn landing on the tail and came to a rest. The FAA inspector found no mechanical problems with the airplane and stated that, due to the atmospheric conditions, the airplane was overloaded. The temperature at the time of the accident was about 102 F, and the density altitude about 2,900 feet.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to perform a weight and balance check that resulted in overloading of the airplane with spraying material, for the weather conditions that existed at the time of takeoff. Factors in this accident were extremely high temperatures, which resulted in a high-density altitude condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA237
- Event ID
- 20001212X21798
- Case number
- MIA00LA237
- 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: fc97d8578a2a56aa00e2c3673d63e0781bfc3d933759cc1d5df5f1330af91a38; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:36:33.386Z.