CEN18FA201 · Ayres Corporation S2R T34
Ayres Corporation S2R T34 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Medford Municipal Airport (O53) to TLC Airport (OK71)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA201
- 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
Ayres Corporation S2R T34
- Aircraft type
- Ayres S2
- 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
- N2249B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Medford Municipal Airport (O53), Medford, OKTo TLC Airport (OK71), Carrier, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 21 years (built 1997)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 impacted radio tower guy wires about 125 ft above ground level. The wreckage path consisted of broken guy wires with yellow paint transfer consistent with the paint on the lower section of the airplane. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation, and autopsy and toxicology of the pilot did not reveal any evidence of physiological impairment or incapacitation.
The radio tower was depicted on the map that the pilot had with him for spraying operations, and the pilot's son stated that the pilot had flown aerial application flights over the field for several years. Witnesses to the accident stated the airplane was flying normally before it impacted the guy wires, nosed up, and immediately descend to the ground. Although aware of the tower, the pilot did not maintain sufficient clearance from the guy wires while spraying the field, which resulted in the in-flight collision with the wires.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from tower guy wires while maneuvering during an aerial application flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA201
- Event ID
- 20180530X05847
- Case number
- CEN18FA201
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 19758a865c96e7f48433f6d9d9e59a55d62945aa1c74524cc464cd537f4c6adf; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:41:41.387Z.