CEN21LA319 · Air Tractor Inc AT-401
Central Air Tractor Inc AT-401 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) while maneuvering
From Arthur N Neu Airport (CIN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA319
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 Inc AT-401
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-401
- 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
- N7315P
- Operator
- Central
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arthur N Neu Airport (CIN), Carroll, IATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1987)
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot had completed half of a planned aerial application of a field when the airplane’s engine lost power. The pilot performed a forced landing to a field which resulted in substantial damage to both wings. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed the inline airframe fuel boost pump would not provide normal fuel output due to wear of the pump motor shaft and leakage of the pump seal. The pump also did not bypass fuel during the on-scene examination but did bypass fuel during testing at the pump manufacturer. The differences in bypass test results were most likely due to plumbing differences between the airplane and the test fixture. The pump manufacturer recommended a 10-year overhaul of the pump and did not provide an hours-in-service overhaul recommendation. The pump was manufactured in 2007, and an airplane logbook record indicated it had been last overhauled in 2013.
Probable cause
The wear-related failure of the airframe fuel boost pump, which resulted in fuel starvation and a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA319
- Event ID
- 20210714103480
- Case number
- CEN21LA319
- 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, coordinates, 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: 74540e8b4121882fdcb17ac169e5c3309d3d13931e8a1a274d4c060883410576; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:17:31.475Z.