CEN20CA079 · Air Tractor AT-504
CO Fire Aviation Air Tractor AT-504 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Fort Morgan Municipal Airport (FMM) to Fort Morgan Municipal Airport (FMM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA079
- 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-504
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-504
- 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
- N970FA
- Operator
- CO Fire Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Morgan Municipal Airport (FMM), Fort Morgan, COTo Fort Morgan Municipal Airport (FMM), Fort Morgan, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2015)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Landing
- 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 on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot on the controls in the left seat, the right seat pilot was familiarizing him with the airplane. The airplane bounced during landing on the runway. During the landing roll, the airplane veered left, and he overcorrected to the right, followed by an overcorrection to the left. He applied heavy braking, and the airplane turned 120° to the right. The side load on the left main landing gear tire resulted in it bursting. The wheel rim then dug into the runway, the airplane bounced, the tailwheel assembly failed, and the tail spring steel strut then dug into the soft surface. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the aft fuselage and the empennage.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare, which resulted in a bounced landing, and his subsequent failure to maintain directional control, which resulted in the left main landing gear tire bursting and the tailwheel assembly failing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA079
- Event ID
- 20200210X23531
- Case number
- CEN20CA079
- 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, coordinates. 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: 149cbc9fa32f68ad7bd4c7190be82a13f30013a1dfb81938080abba18bc5d314; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:04:58.998Z.