WPR13LA248 · Air Tractor Inc AT-301
Air Tractor Inc AT-301 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Phifer Airfield (EAN) to Phifer Airfield (EAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA248
- 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
- N23647
- Operator
- Shepard Robert B
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phifer Airfield (EAN), Wheatland, WYTo Phifer Airfield (EAN), Wheatland, WY
- Aircraft age
- About 32 years (built 1981)
- 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 engine power (total)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he departed for the agricultural aerial application flight with enough fuel to fly for about 1 hour 45 minutes. However, about 45 minutes into the flight, he noticed that the fuel gauges were indicating a low-fuel condition. He disregarded the gauges and continued his flight because he believed he had adequate fuel to complete the flight. A short time later, the engine lost power, and during the forced landing, the airplane impacted an irrigation ditch. Postaccident examination revealed about 1 gallon of fuel in each wing tank and no evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation. Further, no evidence of fuel staining streaks or other indications of fuel leakage were found on the airplane. It is likely that the pilot overestimated the amount of fuel onboard the airplane at the beginning of the flight and that the engine lost power due to fuel exhaustion.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and the pilot's inadequate fuel planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA248
- Event ID
- 20130529X53738
- Case number
- WPR13LA248
- 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: 043b0a489a12d3a13b4df654391b8bbe941c18ad56ddd3fdefcfd29d7c71761d; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:41:41.026Z.