CHI03LA170 · Air Tractor AT-301
Air Tractor AT-301 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From 0D1 · South Haven, MI to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA170
- 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-301
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-301
- 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
- N3659T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 0D1 · South Haven, MITo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
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 was substantially damaged during a forced landing following a loss of engine power. The terrain was soft and rough, causing the aircraft to nose over prior to coming to a rest. The aircraft was most recently fueled with 100 gallons and consumed approximately 35 gallons/hour during flight. The pilot estimated the total flight time since refueling as 2-1/2 to 3 hours, accumulated over two or three flights. A total of 4 gallons of fuel were recovered from the aircraft after the accident. Unusable fuel was listed at 6 gallons according to the Federal Aviation Administration Type Certificate Data Sheet. No evidence of fuel contamination was present. A post-accident examination of the aircraft and engine did not reveal any pre-impact anomalies. The pilot stated that the "most probable cause [of the accident was a] lack of fuel."
Probable cause
Failure of the pilot to verify fuel quantity prior to the accident flight, and fuel exhaustion resulting in a loss of engine power. Contributing factors were the soft, rough, unsuitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA170
- Event ID
- 20030624X00940
- Case number
- CHI03LA170
- 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: 1fc68fbb758312325878e24eafcf8ddfabddbd79aaf017763833332c51223cce; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:07:28.132Z.