CEN14LA376 · Air Tractor Inc AT 401B
Frontier Agricultural Service Air Tractor Inc AT 401B · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Moritz Memorial Airport (K61) to Oakley Municipal Airport (OEL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA376
- 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 Inc AT 401B
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-401
- 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
- N4223F
- Operator
- Frontier Agricultural Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moritz Memorial Airport (K61), Beloit, KSTo Oakley Municipal Airport (OEL), Oakley, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2008)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated commercial pilot departed on a cross-country positioning flight in an airplane that was not equipped for instrument flying. GPS data showed that, after entering an area of low cloud ceiling (700 to 1,000 ft above ground level) and visibility (below 3 miles with precipitation and mist), the airplane made two 90° descending left turns in less than 2 minutes. There was no record that the pilot received a preflight weather briefing.
The airplane wreckage was found the next morning about 1/2 mile from the location of the second turn, and examination of the wreckage revealed that the airplane was oriented with the right wing down when it impacted terrain. Examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures.
Analysis of weather information revealed that deteriorating weather conditions with low ceilings existed in the area at the time of the accident, which occurred in dark night conditions in which there would have been no visible horizon. These restricted visibility conditions would have been conducive to the development of spatial disorientation, and the airplane's maneuvering, unusual attitude, and high-velocity impact are consistent with the effects of spatial disorientation. It is likely the pilot experienced spatial disorientation after entering the deteriorating weather conditions, which led to a loss of airplane control.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot’s inadequate preflight weather planning and subsequent inadvertent encounter with instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in spatial disorientation and the loss of airplane control. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to continue the flight in deteriorating weather conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA376
- Event ID
- 20140718X64536
- Case number
- CEN14LA376
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2014-07-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 18767a389631ed20963b8b0043e01cdf9e9152be57d7467ac3fb8208f40bedea; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:21:52.569Z.