CEN22LA352 · Air Tractor Inc AT-502
Crosswind Aviation Air Tractor Inc AT-502 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) while maneuvering
From Yankee Field (17LS) to Yankee Field (17LS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA352
- 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
Air Tractor Inc AT-502
- 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
- N407CT
- Operator
- Crosswind Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yankee Field (17LS), Port Barre, LATo Yankee Field (17LS), Port Barre, LA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that on the first aerial application flight of the day, he saw a wire on the edge of the field to be sprayed and decided that he could fly under the wire to perform the spray pass. During the pass, the airplane’s rudder struck the wire and tore the rudder off. The airplane returned to the departure airport and during landing, lost directional control due to missing rudder and ground looped. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the rudder from the wire strike and to the fuselage during the ground loop. The pilot reported that there was no preaccident failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from a wire during an aerial application of a field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA352
- Event ID
- 20220802105643
- Case number
- CEN22LA352
- 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: f791295f7861bb3de12c3b7b45f899e82ea9b618a8c6d88c147fdc11ec4a9922; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:32:34.757Z.