ATL04LA173 · Air Tractor AT-401B
East River Flying Service Air Tractor AT-401B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Bainbridge, GA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04LA173
- 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
- 1 · 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-401B
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-401
- 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
- N3047A
- Operator
- East River Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bainbridge, 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
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Low altitude flight/maneuver, abrupt
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 was returning from his last aerial application for the day. A witness saw the airplane flying north around 800 feet. Witnesses then saw the airplane descend approximately to 500 feet. Witnesses state that the airplane pitched 45-degrees nose up and then began to roll to the left until the airplane was fully inverted. From the inverted attitude, the nose of the airplane went down into a 90-degree angle, and collided with the ground. Examination of the accident site revealed the airplane and all of its components together in the middle of a cotton field. The airplane's propeller and engine were buried into the ground in a 75-degree angle. The fuselage was crushed inward. The tail was separated from the empennage. The right horizontal stabilizer and vertical stabilizers were still attached to the tail. The left stabilizer was detached from the tail. The flaps were found in the "up" position. There were no fractured bolts found. There was flight control continuity throughout the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed during an abrupt maneuver which resulted in a stall and collision with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04LA173
- Event ID
- 20040913X01405
- Case number
- ATL04LA173
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-09-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5d5f0fef8b9b5556c18a123c0db935ed648f081986ccaaabfdec89576b16752e; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:21:06.467Z.