CEN18LA226 · Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G 164B
Valley Ag Aerial Services Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G 164B · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Hatch Municipal Airport (E05) to Hatch Municipal Airport (E05)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA226
- 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
Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G 164B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-164
- 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
- N6672Q
- Operator
- Valley Ag Aerial Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hatch Municipal Airport (E05), Hatch, NMTo Hatch Municipal Airport (E05), Hatch, NM
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that he completed four agricultural application loads "just fine." However, after the fourth application, he turned the airplane to conduct a clean-up pass of the field, and subsequently, the airplane impacted the east side of a hill. The pilot stated that he did not remember what happened nor why it happened.
Another pilot who had previously sprayed the accident field reported that, when flying east/west in the morning, the east-facing swath was into the sun and toward rapidly rising terrain. At the time of the accident, clear skies and light winds were present, and the sun was in the east. Given this information and that the operator reported that there was no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation, the pilot likely failed to maintain clearance from rising terrain while facing the sun during the low-level flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from a hillside during an agricultural application flight while facing the sun.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA226
- Event ID
- 20180615X42947
- Case number
- CEN18LA226
- 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: 7ae93df90bc21f9c994474d94fb0e2f7a924f01774f7896c12bc354bc3d54646; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:31:13.320Z.