DFW07LA187 · Air Tractor AT-402
Air Tractor AT-402 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Blanton, MS to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07LA187
- 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-402
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-402
- 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
- N1027V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Blanton, MSTo 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Turbine assembly, turbine wheel › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 9,901-hour commercial pilot lost control of the tail wheel-equipped airplane while performing aerial application. According to the pilot, the engine produced an "explosion" like noise prior to a total loss of engine power. The pilot was then forced to land the airplane in a cotton and soybean field. Upon landing, the airplane sustained damage to the propeller blades, both main landing gears, both wings, the fuselage, and the vertical stabilizer. The pilot reported that at the time of the mishap the airplanes' altitude was approximately be 5 to 10 feet above ground level, resulting in a lack of suitable terrain for forced landing. Teardown and examination of the engine revealed the failure was initiated by a compressor turbine guide vane ring crack at a weld repair that released material into the compressor turbine blades.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to a power turbine failure. Contributing to the accident were the lack of suitable terrain available to pilot for the forced landing and the low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07LA187
- Event ID
- 20070927X01466
- Case number
- DFW07LA187
- 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: 60e3fd8176f2be391ca81a97b4a8f9ed7d16e061ed4282610557ccff6e65651e; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:25:16.265Z.