CEN22LA354 · Air Tractor Inc AT-301
Stardust Ag Aviation Air Tractor Inc AT-301 · Accident while maneuvering
From Lamoni Municipal Airport (LWD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA354
- 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-301
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-301
- 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
- N4326S
- Operator
- Stardust Ag Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lamoni Municipal Airport (LWD), Lamoni, IATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the accident flight was the sixth or seventh aerial application flight that he performed on the day of the accident. He stated that the run-up and takeoff for flight were normal. When he turned toward the intended field of application, he “noticed a lack of performance.” The pilot attempted to restore airplane performance without success. He dumped the load of aerial applicant, and airplane then impacted trees and terrain. The airplane was destroyed by impact forces and postcrash fire. The pilot stated that at the time of the accident the engine instrument indications, which included engine power and propeller speed. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation, and the reason for the airplane’s reported lack of performance was not determined.
Probable cause
A loss of airplane performance for reasons that could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA354
- Event ID
- 20220803105649
- Case number
- CEN22LA354
- 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: 1e3302e003abb29a7929b4ebbc9b13e800ec3a2567c36c15567b5dec38fb0511; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:32:45.212Z.