CEN16LA139 · Air Tractor AT-402
Ranspot Flying Service Air Tractor AT-402 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Burlington, TX (private airstrip) to Beyersville, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA139
- 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 AT-402
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-402
- 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
- N4555E
- Operator
- Ranspot Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Burlington, TX (private airstrip)To Beyersville, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 25 years (built 1991)
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before conducting the aerial application flight, the pilot circled the application site four times in order to identify obstructions. He saw power line poles on the east and west sides of the field, but he did not see an older, unmarked power line pole in the middle of the field, nor the associated powerline that ran across the field. The pilot began the application, and, during the fourth pass, the right wing impacted the powerline. The pilot stated that it was a gray and hazy day, which made the power pole and line difficult to see, and he also stated that he was unfamiliar with the application site. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain visual separation from the power line due to a lack of identifiable and contrasting features, which led to an inflight collision with the line while maneuvering in gray, hazy conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA139
- Event ID
- 20160403X12259
- Case number
- CEN16LA139
- 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: b0f9b684c479842d11d06b535e9a0a7bb9d91bde749ccec59660b4f34a64481e; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:16:03.517Z.