CEN18LA288 · Air Tractor AT 301
Air Tractor AT 301 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Milford, IA (private airstrip) to Milford, IA (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA288
- 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 AT 301
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-301
- 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
- N3169H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Milford, IA (private airstrip)To Milford, IA (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1984)
- 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 control in flight
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The operator reported that, during takeoff for an agricultural application flight, the airplane "quickly whipped" left almost immediately after becoming airborne. Subsequently, the airplane impacted a cornfield and then came to rest about 70 ft west of the runway.
Postaccident airframe examination did not reveal evidence of any preimpact anomalies with the flight control system that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot reported that there were no issues with the engine during the takeoff. The pilot added that he commonly used a gentle rise in the runway to assist the airplane to become airborne during takeoff; however, the investigation could not determine if this played a role in the loss of airplane control. Based on the available evidence, the investigation could not determine the reason for the pilot's loss of airplane control.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of airplane control during takeoff for reasons that could not be determined because no anomalies consistent with a flight control system malfunction were observed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA288
- Event ID
- 20180723X00336
- Case number
- CEN18LA288
- 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: 68d6ea0741c585ab8884a6446483f8b6467c36d506ceba3db715ff1e80d62a4e; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:56:51.646Z.