ERA18FA088 · Air Tractor Inc AT-802 A
AG Concepts Air Tractor Inc AT-802 A · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Morgan City, MS to Morgan City, MS
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18FA088
- 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-802 A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-802
- 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
- N581LA
- Operator
- Ag Concepts
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morgan City, MSTo Morgan City, MS
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2015)
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting aerial application operations on two fields with which he was familiar. He completed the treatment of one field, which comprised three separate flights, then returned to the operator's facility, where the airplane was fueled and chemicals were loaded for the second field. After takeoff, the airplane proceeded to the field, where one witness noticed the airplane making spray passes from east to west, then heard what he described as two nearly simultaneous, "loud/hard" sounds similar to that of the sound of dynamite. A second witness reported hearing the sound of the impact; he did not hear any unusual sound from the airplane. There were no witnesses to the impact.
The airplane's right wing impacted a tree about 40 ft above ground level while the airplane was flying in a left bank of less than 30°. The airplane then impacted the ground inverted about 515 ft from the tree. Examination of the engine, propeller, and flight controls revealed no evidence of preimpact failure or malfunction. Toxicology and autopsy of the pilot revealed no evidence of impairment or incapacitation. Based on the available information, the reason for the impact with the tree could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from a tree for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18FA088
- Event ID
- 20180226X95618
- Case number
- ERA18FA088
- 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: c9267cfc4bbc2c720a840f30ab1cb0165f923cbd476b417f87a02d6f220af452; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:35:03.371Z.