CHI07CA227 · Air Tractor AT-602
Air Tractor AT-602 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Newport, AR (private airstrip) to Flinton, IL (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07CA227
- 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-602
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-602
- 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
- N628JP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Newport, AR (private airstrip)To Flinton, IL (private airstrip)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- 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
- Fluid › Starvation/exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, 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 pilot stated that about 6 miles from the intended destination, the engine started to lose power and he was no longer able to maintain altitude. He setup for a forced landing on a road. He reported that during the approach he maneuvered to avoid a ditch adjacent to the road. The "controls got sloppy and the airplane subsequently stalled about 15 [feet] from the road." The right wing "dipped" and impacted a cornfield, causing the airplane to nose over. The pilot's statement noted he had departed with full fuel (216 gallons) and the flight's duration was approximately 2-1/2 hours. He expected to burn 68 - 70 gallons per hour (gph) at 162 knots. He stated that at the time of the loss of engine power, the fuel gauges indicated that one-quarter remained in the left fuel tank and one-eighth remained in the right fuel tank. He reported that after the engine initially lost power it would regain partial power for short periods of time. He added that he did not suspect an engine problem and believed the loss of engine power was due to fuel starvation. The airplane manufacturer stated that total fuel capacity for the accident airplane make and model was 216 gallons, and that the maximum useable fuel was 210 gallons. At normal cruise, the expected fuel consumption would be approximately 70 to 75 gph, at 155 knots. At high cruise, fuel consumption would be expected to be approximately 83 - 84 gph.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to accurately monitor fuel consumption during flight, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation/exhaustion. A contributing factor was the cornfield encountered during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07CA227
- Event ID
- 20071129X01873
- Case number
- CHI07CA227
- 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: 04a0a7ac88d33949125001fb91e6b3694ade8314ce729dc846836f8553237531; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:37:31.521Z.