DFW08LA167 · Air Tractor AT-502B
Midwest Spray Service Air Tractor AT-502B · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Bethany Memorial Airport (75K) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08LA167
- 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-502B
- 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
- N5005G
- Operator
- Midwest Spray Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bethany Memorial Airport (75K), Bethany, MOTo 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
- Takeoff
- Defining eventThe 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 (partial)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 stated that another pilot believed the accident airplane's engine was not responding properly, so the commercial pilot decided to fly the airplane. After loading approximately 430 gallons of applicant, the pilot began his takeoff roll. During the takeoff roll, and with 1/4 runway remaining, the engine began "rolling back." The pilot raised the nose of the airplane at the departure end and cleared the airfield fence before settling back to the ground. The airplane continued to travel through a field towards a residence when the engine momentarily regained power. The airplane collided with a garage and a residence, rolled inverted and slid 50 yards. An examination of the engine and fuel control unit (FCU) bellow did not reveal any anomalies. The FCU was impact damaged and could not be tested. Testing failed to determine the reason for the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to take off with a known deficiency.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08LA167
- Event ID
- 20080627X00940
- Case number
- DFW08LA167
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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 2008-06-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9f713417219f3c163a66ed6daf7ffc178fc4f0a9502c073c94933528bb142bb4; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:49:49.417Z.