CEN23FA353 · Air Tractor Inc AT-802
Rice Flying Air Tractor Inc AT-802 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Trenton Municipal Airport (TRX) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23FA353
- 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
- 1 · 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-802
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-802
- 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
- N804AA
- Operator
- Rice Flying
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Trenton Municipal Airport (TRX), Trenton, MOTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2017)
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- 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 was conducting an aerial application flight when the accident occurred. The airplane was about ½ mile from the target field when witnesses saw it enter a steep turn, roll over, and spin to the ground. The airplane impacted terrain and a postimpact fire consumed part of the airplane. Examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The engine exhibited signs of rotation during impact. The propeller blades exhibited bending and twisting damage consistent with impact while rotating at moderate-to-high power and producing thrust at initial impact. Based on the available information, it is likely that the pilot exceeded the airplane’s critical angle of attack during a turn and the airplane entered an aerodynamic stall at an altitude too low for recovery.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and failure to maintain adequate airspeed during a steep turn, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at an altitude too low for recovery.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23FA353
- Event ID
- 20230808192827
- Case number
- CEN23FA353
- 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: a3017495bd2b96edf7412a77a0a6f62ce9b6f1a9bd19f39c828ef7d474e371c8; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:04:35.617Z.