FTW03LA019 · Air Tractor AT-602
Air Tractor AT-602 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Yoakum County Airport (F98) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA019
- 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-602
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-602
- 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
- N602GB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yoakum County Airport (F98), Plains, 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 · 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, static
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the agricultural airplane reported that he had just completed spraying a field and climbed a few hundred feet to program the on-board GPS prior to proceeding to the next field to be sprayed. He further stated that while en route to the next field, the leading edge of the right wing collided with a guy wire from a recently erected 756-foot radio station transmitter tower at the 500-foot level. He reported that the impact with the guy wire resulted in a momentary loss of control and the airplane abruptly turned about 90 degrees. The pilot maintained control of the airplane and made an uneventful precautionary landing in an open wheat field approximately one mile southeast of the tower. The tower was not depicted in the Sectional Chart,; however, it was listed in the current Aeronautical Chart Bulletin in the Airport/Facility Directory. The weather at the time of the accident was reported at 1,100 feet overcast, with a visibility of 4 miles in haze.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with the wires. Contributing factors were the low ceilings and the prevailing haze.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA019
- Event ID
- 20021029X05402
- Case number
- FTW03LA019
- 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: cdbad6788d91c9d335fd655d18bf9e2ca361aea7c8463e744511451ef708a4b6; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:00:37.197Z.