CEN10LA217 · Air Tractor AT-802A
Aero Tech Air Tractor AT-802A · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during landing
From Alpine Casparis Municipal Airport (E38) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA217
- 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-802A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-802
- 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
- N9197F
- Operator
- Aero Tech
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alpine Casparis Municipal Airport (E38), Alpine, TXTo 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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 power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had finished spraying a field when the "the engine popped and white smoke came out of the exhaust" and the engine lost power. The pilot attempted to land on a road, but the airplane struck a barbed wire fence and the left main gear hit a "bull hole" and sheared off. A preliminary examination and borescope of the engine revealed no anomalies with the filters and chip detectors. The fuel pump was within acceptance test procedure limits. The fuel control unit (FCU) was slightly high on Wf. The FCU base was removed to inspect the drive-bearing. There was a little organic debris in the bellows cavity. No defects or damage to the fuel pump or FCU was found that would have precluded normal operation. The Py line from the governor to the FCU pressure tested satisfactory. The engine ran in a test cell with no anomalies. Engine trim was slightly out of specifications, but acceleration and deceleration were normal. Disassembly of the combustion chamber revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA217
- Event ID
- 20100422X93549
- Case number
- CEN10LA217
- 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: bd4749f4e870be01e6de2eea1ab3b13ff551beec143fa6d75bfa4331b7349b5d; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:53:30.122Z.