ERA10LA385 · Air Tractor Inc AT-602
Ag Pilots Air Tractor Inc AT-602 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Canton, MS (private airstrip) to Canton, MS (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA385
- 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
- 1 · 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 Inc 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
- N9046D
- Operator
- Ag Pilots
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Canton, MS (private airstrip)To Canton, MS (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
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the operator, the pilot was practicing maneuvers in the agricultural application airplane to improve his skills. Several witnesses observed the airplane spiraling nose down just before it impacted the ground, consistent with it having entered an aerodynamic stall. One of the witnesses recalled hearing the airplane's engine running during the accident sequence. No mechanical anomalies were noted during the postaccident examination of the airplane; however, the airplane was severely damaged due to the severe impact forces and post-crash fire. An annual inspection was completed on the airplane and engine 4 months prior to the accident, with no anomalies noted. Postaccident toxicological testing and autopsy findings revealed no evidence of a medical anomaly and no evidence of drugs or alcohol in the pilot's system. The pilot had been flying the airplane for about 1 month prior to the accident and had accumulated 54 hours of flight experience during that time.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA385
- Event ID
- 20100730X82457
- Case number
- ERA10LA385
- 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. 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: 589b3702cb75a6457a333f6ebfc8aaa77466b7cbea6b8b4a14abd0a47b75ca53; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:58:18.255Z.