CEN21LA362 · Air Tractor Inc AT-502B
McElwain Sprayers Air Tractor Inc AT-502B · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Amelia Earhart Airport (K59) to Wamego Municipal Airport (69K)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA362
- 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-502B
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-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
- N502CP
- Operator
- McElwain Sprayers
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Amelia Earhart Airport (K59), Atchison, KSTo Wamego Municipal Airport (69K), Wamego, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that before the aerial application flight, he added Jet A fuel to both wing tanks for a total of 150 gallons of fuel onboard. While flying low-level over a field on the third load, the pilot noticed a change in engine power. He maneuvered the airplane out of the field and the engine steadily lost power. The pilot tried to advance the power forward with no change and the airspeed and altitude decreased. The pilot performed a forced landing to a bean field. During the landing, the airplane bounced, slid across a road, and then came to rest upright. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and the right wing. The property owner of the bean field reported that he helped the pilot add about 9 gallons of red die automotive diesel fuel to the left fuel tank and about 5 gallons of the fuel to the right fuel tank after the accident. The pilot reported that the low fuel warning light illuminated about five minutes before the partial loss of engine power, yet the pilot continued with the low-level aerial application maneuvers. When the low fuel warning light illuminates, the airplane flight manual states to, “fly straight and level and monitor fuel gauges” and “land as soon as practical.” The operator reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe and engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to continue low-level aerial application flight maneuvers after the low fuel warning light illuminated, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA362
- Event ID
- 20210809103654
- Case number
- CEN21LA362
- 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: a75ea54141eab71a25c3082f643364bdca24af148f13ae5c80adae1bed0273ed; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:23:12.117Z.