NYC08CA279 · Air Tractor AT-502B
Delta Dusters Air Tractor AT-502B · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Sledge, MS (no airport) to Tunica, MS
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA279
- 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
- N61267
- Operator
- Delta Dusters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sledge, MS (no airport)To Tunica, MS
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- 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 of the agricultural airplane flew along a set of power lines, which ran over a wooded area that restricted his ability to see both sides of a field that he was going to spray. After flying along the power lines, he determined that he had enough clearance to "fit under the wire." He thought that it looked "good," and began his spray run on the east side of a field passing under the power lines without incident. He then began a spray run on the west side of the field, but as he approached the power lines he realized that the "wire was too low to go under." Rather than risk hooking his main landing gear on the wires and flipping the airplane onto its back, he chose to "fly into the wire." The airplane received substantial damage to the propeller, engine, empennage, wings and landing gear.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the power lines during low-altitude maneuvers.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA279
- Event ID
- 20081003X17834
- Case number
- NYC08CA279
- 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: 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: d03dd95719b05b8fda697183ac0db66b5ffd727ff03de4130592d63393b24203; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:19:07.541Z.