ANC20LA069 · Air Tractor AT802 A
Aero Spray Air Tractor AT802 A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Ladd Army Airfield (PAFB) to Ladd Army Airfield (PAFB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC20LA069
- 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
- N80166
- Operator
- Aero Spray
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ladd Army Airfield (PAFB), Fairbanks, AKTo Ladd Army Airfield (PAFB), Fairbanks, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 3 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
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The mission-specific modified airplane was used to support wildland firefighting operations. It was equipped with amphibious floats that routed water through a dual scoop system to a hopper located in the airplane. The scoops could be manually deployed by a switch located on the control stick.
According to the pilot, on the 28th scoop of the day, he touched down on the surface of the water and deployed the scoops to begin filling the airplane’s hopper when the airplane veered to the right. In an effort to correct for the veer, he released the scoop switch and applied left rudder to no avail. He retarded the throttle and applied reverse thrust as the airplane began to impact trees located on the lake’s shoreline. The airplane came to rest upright in a marshy area on the lake’s shoreline sustaining substantial damage to the right wing.
A series of detailed examinations of the airplane, including its water scoop system, revealed no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
A loss of control for undetermined reasons while on the surface of the water during scoop operations in support of wildland firefighting operations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC20LA069
- Event ID
- 20200715X05658
- Case number
- ANC20LA069
- 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: d2992c079ce1eb0159f57c101e598bf28a5485475bc7dbd2233fa63400a29e00; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:08:44.307Z.