ATL06LA072 · Air Tractor Inc. AT-502
Air Tractor Inc. AT-502 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Monroeville, AL (private airstrip) to Monroeville, AL
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL06LA072
- 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 Inc. AT-502
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-502
- 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
- N1014D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monroeville, AL (private airstrip)To Monroeville, AL
- 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 · climb to 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was climbing the airplane to 500 feet above ground level and heading to a field 10 miles northeast of the private airstrip. During the climb, the airplane was almost at the intended altitude when the pilot noticed that the internal turbine temperature on the engine was rising and started to lose engine power. The pilot made a forced landing into a soft field and the airplane nosed over. There was a post-impact fire around the engine compartment. Examination of the engine found the power turbine blades fractured with some axial movement noted. Circumferential rub marks were noted on the aft side of the blade roots and disk fir tree slots. The compressor screen was removed and no dents were noted, and all first stage blades were observed intact and rotated freely. No foreign object damage was noted. The engine was split at the "C" flange and some compressor turbine blades were observed fractured at mid-span with trailing edge deformation. No discrepancies were observed in the P3 system. The fuel control unit was impact damaged. The teardown inspection indicated that the engine was operating at the time of impact. Examination did not reveal evidence of uncontainment, case rupture, pre-impact malfunction, or in-flight fire.
Probable cause
Partial loss of engine power for undetermined reasons, which resulted in a forced landing and subsequent nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL06LA072
- Event ID
- 20060504X00512
- Case number
- ATL06LA072
- 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: 8fb25fde3eb4401f2156e3ba2a4c946eea985d53782cd0b1b6a7ab80c8d02f3a; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:57:38.071Z.