DFW06CA152 · Air Tractor AT-401
Air Tractor AT-401 · Accident: overrun during takeoff
From Victoria, TX to Victoria, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW06CA152
- 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
- 0
- 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-401
- 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
- N9190B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Victoria, TXTo Victoria, TX
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- Overrun
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The single-engine agricultural airplane impacted terrain during a takeoff overrun at a private airstrip. The 11,000-hour commercial pilot reported that the hopper was loaded with 250 gallons of cotton defoliant and the airplane had a total of 35 gallons of 100LL aviation fuel on board for the aerial application flight of a nearby cotton field. The pilot stated that a full engine run up was completed prior to taking the runway for a southeast departure. The pilot added that the acceleration appeared normal and the 600-horsepower radial engine was producing full power during the takeoff roll on the 3,200-foot by 130-foot wide gravel airstrip. The pilot added that the tailwheel-equipped airplane was properly configured with the flaps in the takeoff (one-notch down) position. After breaking ground, the airplane climbed to an altitude of 10 to 15 feet above the ground before the airplane settled back on to the runway. The pilot attempted to get the airplane airborne again; however, the spray boom on the left wing collided with corn stalks on the corn field at the departure end of his private airstrip. The airplane came to rest in the upright position about 200 yards beyond the departure end of the airstrip. The aft section of the airplane sustained structural damage. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical deficiencies with the airplane or the engine at the time of the accident. The pilot reported that the lack of performance by the airplane was due to the calm winds that prevailed that morning. The density altitude was calculated by the investigator-in-charge at 881 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in aborting the takeoff which resulted in an overrun. A contributing factor was the unfavorable wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW06CA152
- Event ID
- 20060725X01003
- Case number
- DFW06CA152
- 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: c3810f077e6529251989d89bfb12aac0032de8bfc75c1c4aed83582eeb6ecd94; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:49:06.988Z.