CEN13LA263 · Air Tractor Inc AT-602
Andy Deterding Ag Aviation Air Tractor Inc AT-602 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Wellington Municipal Airport (EGT) to Udall, KS
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA263
- 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-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
- N628JP
- Operator
- Andy Deterding Ag Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wellington Municipal Airport (EGT), Wellington, KSTo Udall, KS
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of an aerial application flight reported that he arrived at the field and conducted three surveillance orbits to check for obstacles and wires. The pilot flew five spraying passes over the field, but on the sixth pass, the airplane’s propeller and landing gear struck a powerline. The airplane started vibrating severely, and the pilot executed a forced landing to a nearby field. During the landing roll, the left wing struck a large bush that turned the airplane sideways as it skidded to a stop, which resulted in substantial damage to the wing. The pole associated with the powerline that was struck was located in the tree line, and the pilot did not see the low hanging powerline that ran at an angle across the field. He did not have a map of the field, and he was not informed about the low hanging powerline.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate flight planning, which resulted in a wire strike.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA263
- Event ID
- 20130507X13505
- Case number
- CEN13LA263
- 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: 572b2954314e9d489e8b65a8156c220d92c43b179b2e6431d070203ad8eab116; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:26:41.425Z.