CEN20LA269 · Air Tractor AT 602
PMZ Flying Service Air Tractor AT 602 · Accident en route
From Weldon, AR (private airstrip) to Weldon, AR (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA269
- 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
- N602NY
- Operator
- PMZ Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Weldon, AR (private airstrip)To Weldon, AR (private airstrip)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an aerial application flight, the pilot was returning to the airplane’s base when the engine "spooled down” and lost total power. The pilot stated that, when the total loss of engine power occurred, the airplane was established in cruise flight at an altitude of about 400 ft above ground level. He was unable to restore engine power by moving the power and propeller levers to full forward and activating the fuel boost pump and ignitors. The pilot made a “firm” forced landing in an open field. The airplane made a ground loop, which caused the tailwheel to separate and resulted in substantial damage to the aft fuselage.
Postaccident examination of the fuel system revealed ample fuel remaining and no evidence of contamination. The engine operated normally during two postaccident ground tests. Thus, the reasons for the total loss of engine power during the accident flight could not be determined with the available evidence from the investigation.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power during cruise flight for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA269
- Event ID
- 20200708X33014
- Case number
- CEN20LA269
- 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: ef1d21ceee26ba2c2ad1fc7c1789545c9623dee5ea7c2c3feac045ccbc8bbd56; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:04:33.018Z.