WPR22FA239 · Air Tractor Inc AT-602
Gemtrek Air Tractor Inc AT-602 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Warden, WA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22FA239
- 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 Inc AT-602
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-602
- 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
- N602GH
- Operator
- Gemtrek
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warden, WATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 26 years (built 1996)
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting an aerial application flight. Surveillance video footage showed that the airplane entered a steep right turn from a straight and level attitude consistent with a course reversal. Shortly thereafter, the airplane entered a steep, nose-down, right-wing-low descent. The airplane subsequently impacted terrain in a nearly flat, upright attitude. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any mechanical failures that would have precluded normal operation. Flight control continuity was confirmed from the cockpit to all corresponding flight control surfaces. Contact signatures and fractured surfaces from internal components of the engine were consistent with the engine developing power at a high range at the time of impact. Based on the available information, it is likely that the pilot exceeded the airplane’s critical angle of attack during the turn and the airplane entered an aerodynamic stall at an altitude too low for recovery.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack during a steep turn, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at an altitude too low for recovery.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22FA239
- Event ID
- 20220703105411
- Case number
- WPR22FA239
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2022-07-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a12bec89b9ab0ad050e4ad1b8fbbd4f8cae7473098c4b9aee48f2a1dd660042f; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:46:49.854Z.