FTW00LA259 · Air Tractor AT-502
Air Tractor AT-502 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Carter-Norman Airport (TA87) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA259
- 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-502
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-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
- N1508V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carter-Norman Airport (TA87), Muleshoe, TXTo 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
- 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
- Guy wire
- 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
A witness observed the agricultural airplane making several spray passes over the field in which an antenna tower was located. The witness observed the aircraft making a 'very low spray pass.' He then observed the airplane pull nose up and bank to the left. The right wing contacted the uppermost guy wire on the north side of the antenna. Subsequently, the wire snapped 'causing the upper part of the tower to fall.' The witness added that the impact with the wire had 'disrupted the flight of the aircraft by spinning it to the right.' The airplane then impacted the ground and caught fire. The pilot had accumulated approximately 15,750 total flight hours, of which an unknown amount were in the accident airplane. According to toxicology tests, 0.071 ug/ml of diphenhydramine was detected in the pilot's blood, and an unquantified amount was found in the urine. Diphenhydramine is an over-the-counter drug used as an antihistamine. Results of a study on diphenhydramine concluded that it adversely affects a person's ability to maneuver an automobile.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with the antenna guy wire. A factor was the pilot's physical impairment from his use of diphenhydramine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA259
- Event ID
- 20001212X21980
- Case number
- FTW00LA259
- 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: 41dcc5f7ad5d6d7c402bfe97e8d5c2b256cf3c3ddc50f700ac04fa5b8304b6ec; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:52:15.540Z.