ERA09CA428 · Air Tractor AT502
Air Tractor AT502 · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Dundee, MS (no airport) to Dundee, MS (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA428
- 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 AT502
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT502
- 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
- N502AJ
- Operator
- Kevin Bailey Jones
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dundee, MS (no airport)To Dundee, MS (no airport)
- 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 · rejected 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 control on ground
- 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 › Task performance
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 was departing to the north, from a private concrete airstrip, for the purpose of conducting an agricultural application flight. The airplane was loaded with 400 gallons of fungicide, and contained 110 gallons of fuel on board. Shortly after becoming airborne, the airplane began to settle back toward the runway. The pilot attempted to dump the fungicide; however, the airplane settled into a soybean field and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the empennage, fuselage, wings, and engine firewall. The pilot stated that he did not experience any mechanical malfunctions and examination of the wreckage by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector did not reveal any anomalies. The nearest weather reporting station, located approximately 12 miles north of the accident site, reported winds from 170 degrees at 6 knots, and a temperature of 27 degrees Celsius, about the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA428
- Event ID
- 20090730X73703
- Case number
- ERA09CA428
- 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: 3c876ed12da70948416a42af3177dcda24623de1ff1d31c758421455b0e839c8; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:05:32.180Z.