ERA20LA217 · Air Tractor AT502 B
Air Tractor AT502 B · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Atmore, AL to Atmore, AL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA217
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N879JA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Atmore, ALTo Atmore, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2013)
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot's spouse, he departed earlier on the morning of the accident to dispense two small “loads" of aerial application. On his return home, he called and asked her to come outside of their residence to watch the airplane fly over. She said that the airplane flew over the house before making a climb straight up. The airplane then banked to the left, rolled right, descended straight down, and she heard a loud "boom" shortly thereafter. Two witnesses who were fishing on a nearby lake saw the airplane flying below the tree line before it climbed straight up. They stated that the airplane rolled and descended straight down nose-first. They heard a "loud thud" and then silence. Examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that the pilot exceeded the airplane’s critical angle of attack while maneuvering at low altitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and spin and loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack while maneuvering at low altitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall, spin, and loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA217
- Event ID
- 20200616X02410
- Case number
- ERA20LA217
- 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, cause areas. 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: a88aada3a88be0951065086205d37cfec0f6246402c31266dfef7bd5f686cf1f; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:16:15.125Z.