CEN20CA158 · Air Tractor AT 602
Tradewind Air Tractor AT 602 · Accident during landing
From Tradewind Agricultural Airport (8TE8) to El Campo, TX (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA158
- 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 602
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-602
- 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
- N419TW
- Operator
- Tradewind
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tradewind Agricultural Airport (8TE8), El Campo, TXTo El Campo, TX (no airport)
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2014)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing at a remote agricultural airstrip for the first time. While on the final approach to land to the south and just before touchdown, the pilot saw a ground spray rig maneuver toward the airstrip. The airplane touched down uneventfully. The pilot added that the ground spray rig then "pulled out on me, not thinking it could be on the road that went around the end of the airstrip." The pilot incorrectly judged that the ground spray rig was crossing the runway and incorrectly believed that a runway incursion might occur. The pilot applied full power, but due to the turbine engine's lag in accelerating, the pilot realized that he was "not going to have enough time" to perform a go-around. The pilot reduced the power and attempted to stop the airplane before he ran out of available runway. The airplane impacted a perimeter fence and sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, the right aileron, and the engine mount. The operator reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudgment of a ground spray rig’s position and his incorrect belief that a runway incursion might occur, which resulted in the pilot attempting and then aborting a go-around, which resulted in a runway excursion and collision with a fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA158
- Event ID
- 20200421X81851
- Case number
- CEN20CA158
- 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: fe0cb7ffeb307bc0aff364d633cbac834160d6ed50262a05fbb5738ecb22d5d4; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:29:52.733Z.