CHI02LA259 · Air Tractor AT-402A
Air Tractor AT-402A · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Cherokee County Regional Airport (CKP) to Cherokee County Regional Airport (CKP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA259
- 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
Air Tractor AT-402A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-402
- 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
- N9032K
- Operator
- Vance J. Bakke · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cherokee County Regional Airport (CKP), Cherokee, IATo Cherokee County Regional Airport (CKP), Cherokee, IA
- 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
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Flight control, rudder surface › Separation
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not possible
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane contacted power lines during an aerial application flight. The pilot reported he was making a swath run along a set of power lines that ran north and south through the middle of a field when the airplane contacted another set of power lines that ran east and west along the north edge of the field. The top 10 inches of the vertical stabilizer and the rudder separated from the airplane. The pilot reported that when the rudder separated, the rudder pedals were "pulled tight against the hopper" which resulted in him having no rudder control. In addition, he stated that he only had "some" aileron control. The pilot reported that about one-half mile from the airport, he pulled the power back to 1,000 pounds of torque and the airplane began to bank to the right. He reported that he was unable to control the bank with the ailerons. According to the pilot, the airplane then banked to the left, the nose pitched up, and the airplane "rolled over on its back." He reported the nose then dropped and the airplane descended into the ground.
Probable cause
The pilot failed to maintain clearance with the power lines resulting in the rudder separation and the subsequent loss of aircraft control. A factor associated with the accident was the power line that was contacted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA259
- Event ID
- 20020830X01494
- Case number
- CHI02LA259
- 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: aad47005aa505d44f7c6564f1008f46f92ea5306bc5fc8a8e2d8adf5eebf1e8d; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:35:36.899Z.