CEN10LA463 · Air Tractor AT-802A
Alan East Aviation Air Tractor AT-802A · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Karl Stefan Memorial Airport (OFK) to Lindsay, NE
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA463
- 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 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
- N802BG
- Operator
- Alan East Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Karl Stefan Memorial Airport (OFK), Norfolk, NETo Lindsay, NE
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had been spraying fungicide on corn fields when the accident occurred. There were no witnesses to the accident. Examination of the accident site indicated that the airplane had impacted the ground at a high angle and that there was a post-impact fire. Engine examination bore evidence consistent with power being developed at the time of impact. No preimpact malfunctions or failures were found that would have precluded normal operation. Autopsy of the pilot revealed non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy, but the severity could not be determined. Since the pilot did not have any known personal physician and there was no evidence that he had ever sought treatment for this condition, it is likely that it had gone undiagnosed. Patients diagnosed with non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy who also have significant left ventricular dysfunction are at increased risk for sudden cardiac death. The pilot had a significant risk factor for cardiac arrhythmias, but the fact that he had significant bleeding associated with the injuries due to the accident suggests that he did not experience sudden cardiac death before impact. The possibility of preimpact impairment or incapacitation of the pilot could not be definitively established.
Probable cause
The loss of airplane control for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation and evidence was insufficient to definitively establish whether the pilot was impaired or incapacitated.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA463
- Event ID
- 20100808X54251
- Case number
- CEN10LA463
- 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: 34e9cdbfac3f34c5c63a6d88acd227283fab72f8ef526afa49ea6c14e908538b; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:59:25.206Z.