CEN19LA334 · Air Tractor AT802 A
Brignac Flying Service Air Tractor AT802 A · Accident while maneuvering
From Golden Triangle Regional Airport (GTR) to Columbus, MS
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA334
- 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 AT802 A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT802
- 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
- N801BF
- Operator
- Brignac Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Golden Triangle Regional Airport (GTR), Columbus/W Point/Starkville, MSTo Columbus, MS
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2017)
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, during a chemical application pass over a field, he saw that the engine torque "had crept up." He attempted to reduce engine torque but noticed that the power lever "felt stuck." Shortly thereafter, he again tried to move the power lever. When it would not move, he increased pressure and it "broke free." The engine power decreased to idle, and the pilot's subsequent power lever inputs had no effect. The pilot then performed a forced landing, during which the left wing impacted a tree and the airplane cartwheeled before coming to rest upright on its landing gear, resulting in substantial damage to the wings, fuselage, and empennage. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Due to the severity of the damage to the forward section of the airplane, the cause for the momentary binding and subsequent loss of engine power control could not be established.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA334
- Event ID
- 20190930X81213
- Case number
- CEN19LA334
- 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: 8fcf4fbce847875a5539d85f42b114e088b6dc62597d9da8d8d89cf85ad6b1b2; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:15:57.272Z.