CEN23LA202 · Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G-164B
S & S Aviation Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G-164B · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) while maneuvering
From Kaplan, LA to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's flight rules. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA202
- 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
- 0
- 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
Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G-164B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman G-164
- 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
- N6699Q
- Operator
- S & S Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kaplan, LATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1977)
- 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 Possible conflict
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 before his 12th aerial application flight of the day, the airplane was overloaded with fertilizer due to faulty ground loading equipment. Knowing the airplane was overloaded the pilot decided to dump some of the fertilizer over the grass strip during takeoff. As the airplane reached the point on the grass strip that he felt he could safely stop, the “airplane felt like it was wanting to fly” so he continued the takeoff. As the pilot turned toward the field that he intended to apply the fertilizer to, the airplane settled and impacted in a field. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings, empennage, and fuselage, and the engine separated from the airframe. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
No Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 137 certificate was found for the operator and there was no record of a knowledge and skill test for the pilot as required by 14CFR 137.19.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to takeoff with the airplane overloaded which resulted in the airplane settling and subsequently impacting terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA202
- Event ID
- 20230525192239
- Case number
- CEN23LA202
- 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: 2ee5504a05ba5de2c2dd0a480f1425f84a364064cb821c8c19d6756fbe0bec7e; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:38:34.871Z.