ERA23LA215 · Air Tractor Inc AT-402A
Pitts Aerial Services Air Tractor Inc AT-402A · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Cullman, AL (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA215
- 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-402A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-402
- 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
- N623LA
- Operator
- Pitts Aerial Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cullman, AL (private airstrip)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 23 years (built 2000)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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
- Environmental issues › Operating environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the agricultural airplane was landing on a private runway that was about 24 feet wide and surrounded by wheat crop. The pilot described that, during the landing, the airplane was closer to the edge of the runway than he thought, and the airplane’s right spray boom caught on the wheat after touchdown. The airplane subsequently veered off the runway and into the wheat field, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane’s empennage and left wing. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation and that he should have checked the runway conditions before landing and considered the possible impact of the growing wheat on his operation from the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to land on a runway where there was insufficient clearance from obstructions (wheat crop) to operate safely.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA215
- Event ID
- 20230503107307
- Case number
- ERA23LA215
- 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: 77a3100a3a1a1fee9241a744ab4faec80a9bc19b7a0fc26d1be83cae219012d8; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:33:54.238Z.