CEN13FA465 · Air Tractor AT-400
Terhune Flying Service Air Tractor AT-400 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Perryton, TX to Perryton, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA465
- 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-400
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-400
- 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
- N3159B
- Operator
- Terhune Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perryton, TXTo Perryton, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1982)
- 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 · cruise
- 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)
- 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
- Tower/antenna (incl guy wires)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was en route from a private airstrip to a nearby field to apply herbicide and flying about 150 feet agl, when the airplane struck a 197-foot meteorological tower (MET) about 35 feet from its top. A survey of the accident scene revealed that the sun was ahead of and to the right of the airplane's flight path and likely obstructed the pilot's ability to see the tower. An examination of the airplane did not reveal any preimpact anomalies.
The NTSB recently concluded that, due to their rapid construction and lack of conspicuity, METs pose a threat to pilots who conduct low-altitude operations and recommended required registration, marking, and—where feasible—lighting of these structures in order to aid pilots in avoiding them.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure maintain clearance from a meteorological tower while en route at a low altitude. Contributing to the accident was the sun's glare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA465
- Event ID
- 20130807X14838
- Case number
- CEN13FA465
- 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: 0b91bd7d0a9a2b025ec21c0708a85cbaf02250a7136f3c914bd3bbd09b62bea5; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:01:57.203Z.