WPR23LA212 · Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G-164B
Valley Air Grumman Acft ENG COR-Schweizer G-164B · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Colusa County Airport (O08) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA212
- 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
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
- N6750K
- Operator
- Valley Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Colusa County Airport (O08), Colusa, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 during takeoff/landing
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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 › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported this was the eighth aerial application flight of the day spraying rice fields. He had made all takeoff’s flying low under a power line about 3/4 mile from the departure end of the runway. He stated that due to the monotony of the flights combined with fatigue and a bi-plane wing configuration, he lost sight of the power line and struck it. The airplane impacted the ground and cartwheeled sustaining substantial damage to the wings, fuselage, vertical and horizontal stabilizer. The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from a power line during a low-level aerial application flight. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA212
- Event ID
- 20230605192307
- Case number
- WPR23LA212
- 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: c41897746a9a8af99135a527b73e6f762d0e429d5879bf836f9e72bff58b4c87; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:41:20.156Z.