CEN11LA323 · Air Tractor Inc AT-402A
Air Tractor Inc AT-402A · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Arriba, CO to Arriba, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA323
- 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 Inc AT-402A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-402
- 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
- N5192F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arriba, COTo Arriba, CO
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (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 oper/perf/capability
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot completed an aerial application portion of his flight and departed from the work area. The airplane collided with the ground at a high speed in a flat, open field about 7 miles from the work area. The pilot sustained serious injuries and was unable to recall any of the events preceding the accident. Postaccident examination of the airplane did not identify any preimpact abnormalities with the airframe or engine. The airplane’s three-bladed propeller displayed signatures that were consistent with the engine producing power at the time of impact. Data recovered from an on-board GPS unit tracked the airplane from departure to the accident site. The data showed that, during the final minute of the flight, the airplane’s airspeed increased and its altitude decreased. The flight profile is consistent with a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) for undetermined reasons.
Probable cause
The pilot’s controlled flight into terrain for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA323
- Event ID
- 20110506X14016
- Case number
- CEN11LA323
- 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: 4af6bfbdd36ff109e44c37c25c6be0f31ba79c3202c1368177f49619fc5c4aee; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:08:17.778Z.