MIA02LA135 · Aero Commander S2R
Aero Commander S2R · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Cochran Airport (48A) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA135
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Aero Commander S2R
- Aircraft type
- Aero Commander S2
- 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
- N8943Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cochran Airport (48A), Cochran, GATo 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
- 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
- Terrain condition › None suitable
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After about 45 minutes of aerial application to cotton crops, following the third pass on his second field, the pilot reported his engine started backfiring and shaking violently. He started for his home field, but could not sustain level flight. He chose a cotton field for an emergency landing, but his right wing struck a tree causing damage to the wing and main landing gear. Post crash examination of the engine revealed a broken magneto housing, causing defective ignition timing.
Probable cause
A loss of power while conducting aerial application to cotton crops due to failure of a magneto housing, and the resultant emergency descent and landing to an unsuitable field, causing the collision with a tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA135
- Event ID
- 20020717X01154
- Case number
- MIA02LA135
- 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, coordinates. 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: d6f7f564c138a396f9ddf0c93bd5d4a2de46e46f3a3b63bd6c645f7f977f721d; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:43:03.979Z.