CEN11LA598 · Air Tractor Inc AT-301
Semper Fi Aviation Air Tractor Inc AT-301 · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Edgeley Municipal Airport (51D) to Edgeley Municipal Airport (51D)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA598
- 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-301
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-301
- 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
- N73071
- Operator
- Semper Fi Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Edgeley Municipal Airport (51D), Edgeley, NDTo Edgeley Municipal Airport (51D), Edgeley, ND
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
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 reported that shortly after leveling off and making a power reduction for cruise flight, he noticed that a descent had developed. The pilot added one notch of flaps and dumped the chemical load using the emergency dump handle but the descent continued. He landed the airplane in a bean field. A postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any anomalies, nor were any anomalies noted in the airplane’s recent annual inspection. The temperature and dew point recorded at a nearby airport were in a range susceptible to the formation of carburetor ice at glide and cruise power settings. Carburetor icing usually results in engine roughness and a drop in manifold pressure. Since the pilot made no mention of engine roughness, a decrease in manifold pressure, and was able to increase manifold pressure during his attempts to arrest the descent, it is unlikely that the power loss was due to carburetor icing. The reason for the power loss could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA598
- Event ID
- 20110826X95650
- Case number
- CEN11LA598
- 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: 54d5492c0fc53c7f49d7c611f729870132cd78c9b54d6859aa4f402ec493b78e; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:40:01.254Z.