CEN16LA291 · Air Tractor AT602
Emrich Aerial Spraying Air Tractor AT602 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Columbus Municipal Airport (KOLU) to Columbus Municipal Airport (KOLU)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA291
- 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 AT602
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT602
- 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
- N2033N
- Operator
- Emrich Aerial Spraying
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbus Municipal Airport (KOLU), Columbus, NETo Columbus Municipal Airport (KOLU), Columbus, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2011)
- 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
- 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
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was performing an aerial application flight when the airplane struck the ground in a right wing low, 60° nose-down attitude. Flight track data from an onboard aerial guidance system revealed that the airplane had completed 6 previous aerial applications that morning, and was engaged in a seventh application when the accident occurred. During the last application, the airplane made 4 passes followed by shallow turns to reverse direction. During these turns, the airplane climbed until it reached 90° abeam the direction of application, then descended as it completed the turn on the opposite heading. The accident occurred during the turn between the fourth and fifth passes. Postaccident examination of the airframe, engine, and propeller revealed no evidence of any mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The flap actuator was found extended 3-7/8 inches, correlating to a flap extension of 30°.
Based on the recorded data, the characteristics of the airplane's last turn before impact did not vary greatly from that of the other turns performed during the accident flight. It is likely that, during the turn, the pilot allowed the airspeed to decay and the airplane exceeded its critical angle of attack, which resulted in an inadvertent aerodynamic stall at an altitude which did not allow for recovery.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack while maneuvering at low altitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA291
- Event ID
- 20160728X22738
- Case number
- CEN16LA291
- 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: 3edf0d1cc1493c603254792c1106c13951c32e3d2c377764e4138c4527489ade; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:56:59.474Z.