DEN02TA092 · Air Tractor AT-802A
USDA Forest Service Air Tractor AT-802A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during takeoff
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN02TA092
- 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
- Government
- 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-802A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-802
- 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
- N91092
- Operator
- U.S.D.A. Forest Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Broomfield, COTo 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Landing gear, tire › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot taxied onto runway 29R, with approximately 700 gallons of fire retardant. He started the takeoff roll and at approximately 800 to 900 feet down the runway he heard a "distinct bang." The airplane immediately started an uncommanded turn to the left, and the pilot, using right rudder and right braking action, could not regain control of the aircraft. The airplane departed the runway and impacted the Visual Approach Slope Indictor box, which sheared the right main landing gear off. Subsequently, the right wing and aileron were bent up. Postaccident examination of the airplane by maintenance personnel revealed that the left main tire inner seal had separated from the wheel. No determination was made why this event occurred. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector said he found two black skid marks on the runway; the left one started 10 to 15 feet before the right one.
Probable cause
the airplane's left main landing gear tire separated from its wheel during takeoff roll for an undetermined reason. Contributing factors were the pilot's inability to maintain aircraft control during takeoff roll and the subsequent impact with the Visual Approach Slope Indicator box.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN02TA092
- Event ID
- 20020816X01406
- Case number
- DEN02TA092
- 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: c05440123f790963c7d5a79ef5f9b7e9f68a2443a369e46542df2dd0c9b9783c; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:18:35.838Z.