ERA17LA326 · Air Tractor Inc AT 502 UNDESIGNAT
Londe Air Air Tractor Inc AT 502 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Fulton Airport (1M7) to Fulton Airport (1M7)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA326
- 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 502 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-502
- 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
- N4531K
- Operator
- Londe Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fulton Airport (1M7), Hickman, KYTo Fulton Airport (1M7), Hickman, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 27 years (built 1990)
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the aerial application flight indicated that the airplane was in cruise flight on its way to an application site when he heard a "pop," and the engine lost total power. The pilot maneuvered the airplane for a forced landing on a roadway but changed his forced landing site to a corn field due to vehicle traffic. After touchdown, the main landing gear separated, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage.
Examination of the engine revealed catastrophic internal damage; all compressor turbine blades were fractured. Metallurgical examination revealed fracture features consistent with high-velocity impact and high-temperature deformation such as "creep." The primary fracture could not be identified; therefore, the sequence in which the fractures occurred could not be determined.
The engine was an assembled compilation of manufacturer and aftermarket parts manufacturer approval (PMA) parts. Some PMA parts installed were not authorized for the application, and the serial numbers reflected in the maintenance records did not match the components installed. For example, the factory original compressor turbine disk was installed, but the logbook indicated another disk was installed. The compressor turbine disk was a time-limited item, and the total hours on the installed disk could not be verified.
Probable cause
The catastrophic failure of the compressor turbine blades, which resulted in a total loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the installation of undocumented, time-limited engine components of indeterminate age.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA326
- Event ID
- 20170915X32610
- Case number
- ERA17LA326
- 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: 80984cabeef1dd219f9d1ee848195b208a1f88efda483073c5ae47d896495f36; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:50:44.569Z.