CEN23LA346 · Air Tractor Inc AT-502
Airborne Custom Spraying Air Tractor Inc AT-502 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Aslesen Airport (8MN2) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA346
- 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
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
- N45453
- Operator
- Airborne Custom Spraying
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aslesen Airport (8MN2), Halstad, MNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 32 years (built 1991)
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after loading about 100 gallons of jet fuel and about 420 gallons of aerial spray product, he began a takeoff roll on the 2,506 ft asphalt runway. The pilot attempted to rotate the airplane with about 300 ft of runway remaining. Unable to climb out of ground effect, the pilot attempted to jettison the aerial spray product during and after takeoff. The airplane was airborne for about 200 yards before it settled into the soybean field. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings, empennage, and fuselage. During an interview, the pilot stated that he took off with a tailwind with one notch of flaps and remembers over torquing the engine. He reported that he likely rotated too soon, was slow, and never got out of ground effect. The pilot reported, and a postaccident examination corroborated that, there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s attempt to rotate the airplane without sufficient airspeed which resulted in a lack of climb performance and impact with terrain. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to attempt the takeoff with a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA346
- Event ID
- 20230803192785
- Case number
- CEN23LA346
- 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: ee2dc1b4401466321078170d8bc9742ca040ce9a9cf4446419c460420711488a; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:57:23.982Z.