CEN18LA249 · Air Tractor AT502 B
Ross Seed Co Dba Air Tractor AT502 B · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Tappen, ND (private airstrip) to Tappen, ND (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA249
- 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 AT502 B
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT502
- 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
- N502S
- Operator
- Ross Seed Co Inc Dba
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tappen, ND (private airstrip)To Tappen, ND (private airstrip)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 (partial)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he noticed degraded engine performance when the airplane was about halfway down the runway during takeoff for the aerial application flight. Specifically, the engine torque decreased from 1,700 ft-lbs at the start of the takeoff to 1,500 ft-lbs. He determined that there was not enough runway to abort the takeoff and stop the airplane, so he applied full power and dumped the product load. The engine continued to lose power, and the airplane subsequently continued off the end of the runway and nosed over in high vegetation. Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine, including individual testing of several engine components, confirmed that the engine was producing power during the impact sequence, but no determination could be made as to how much power the engine produced. The examination did not reveal any mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power 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 CEN18LA249
- Event ID
- 20180628X41224
- Case number
- CEN18LA249
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-06-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e7420dcc5a3438591612cbd31fd71c9cf27685996a38f9278635d4d59c39257d; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:41:39.540Z.