CEN21FA270 · Air Tractor 502B
Scott Flying Service Air Tractor 502B · Accident while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21FA270
- 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 502B
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor 502
- 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
- N6088K
- Operator
- Scott Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 26 years (built 1995)
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness reported that he observed the airplane about 1 mile away flying directly toward him. He stated that it appeared to be straight and level, about treetop height. Without warning, he observed a small puff of white smoke; the airplane immediately nosed down and impacted the ground. A post-crash fire ensued. The witness did not hear any abnormal noises with the airplane or engine, nor did he observe any wildlife in the area. He stated that “everything appeared normal until it wasn’t.”
The airplane came to rest upright on the edge of a field. The nose of the airplane was embedded into the dirt at about a 45° angle and only one propeller blade was visible. The forward fuselage, cockpit, inboard right and left wings, and the aft fuselage exhibited extensive thermal damage. A postaccident airframe and engine examination did not reveal any anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operations. The engine displayed signatures of rotation, and control continuity was established throughout.
Another pilot reported that, on the day of the accident, he was working with the accident pilot from the same grass strip. Throughout the day they dispersed about 28 loads of fertilizer; the accident pilot did not report any anomalies with the airplane during these flights.
Probable cause
An inflight loss of control and subsequent impact with terrain during an aerial application 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 CEN21FA270
- Event ID
- 20210615103270
- Case number
- CEN21FA270
- 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: fa340faf31ec23d2977024e0bd7c2ecdb86d076bbce3da97e8aad23a6097f3e7; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:29:48.534Z.