CEN20CA347 · Grumman G164 B
Grumman G164 B · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA347
- 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
Grumman G164 B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G164
- 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
- N48416
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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 flying the agricultural airplane, low-level, applying fertilizer to a field, and running parallel to power lines that bordered the field. When he finished the center of the field, he flew several cleanup passes on some of the edges of the field. He thought that the power lines were to the south of his position and stated that they blended into the tree line. As he came down into the field for a pass, his top wing blocked his forward view, and when he leveled out, he could not avoid the power lines in front of him. The airplane collided with the power lines and impacted the field which was adjacent to a roadway. The airplane came to rest inverted and sustained substantial damage to the wings, the fuselage, and empennage. As the power lines came down, they impacted a moving semi-truck, and pulled down adjacent power line poles. The pilot and the driver of the semi-truck sustained minor injuries. After the accident, the pilot stated that the accident could have been avoided if he had flown around the boarders to double check for obstacles.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of visual reference during agricultural low-level flight, resulting in collision with power lines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA347
- Event ID
- 20200818X51852
- Case number
- CEN20CA347
- 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: 28028ad7efd3e523a3285c6e87f0f77ef535674455705a86bfd2ad8de9702fb1; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:48:57.804Z.