CEN24LA318 · Ayres Corporation S2R 600
Heritage Ayres Corporation S2R 600 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Lakeview-Airport-Griffith Field (13C) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA318
- 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
Ayres Corporation S2R 600
- Aircraft type
- Ayres S2
- 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
- N4004K
- Operator
- Heritage
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakeview-Airport-Griffith Field (13C), Lakeview, MITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 46 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
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Organizational issues › Development
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing a low-level aerial application flight when he momentarily and partially turned his head and body to the left to view the spray boom pressure gauge, which was located on the left spray boom. Shortly after viewing the spray boom pressure gauge, the main landing gear impacted terrain. The pilot immediately pulled up, then performed a forced landing to a flat grass field. The pilot performed an emergency shutdown and egressed the airplane without further incident. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and both wings. The pilot reported that, in order to view the spray boom pressure gauge, he needed to look to the left and down, to about an 8 o’clock position. The pilot reported that it takes one to two seconds to view the readings accurately on the analog gauge due to the distance from the spray boom pressure gauge to the cockpit, which he estimated as about 8 ft. The pilot classified the location of the spray boom pressure gauge as a “bad design.” All the operator’s airplanes were equipped with a pressure gauge mounted on the left side spray boom, which was the only source of spray boom pressure information. The operator reported that the pressure gauges are located on the spray booms because that location provided the most reliable reading. It is likely that the pilot, while his head and body were turned to the left to view the spray boom pressure gauge, inadvertently allowed the airplane to descend and impact terrain. If the spray boom pressure was located inside the cockpit on the instrument panel, the pilot would not need to look outside of the airplane, thus diverting his attention during low-level operations.
A similar accident occurred about 21 years prior, during which an airplane impacted wires after the pilot looked down to view the spray boom pressure gauge. Research indicated that some aerial application airplanes are equipped with spray boom pressure gauges inside the cockpit, or otherwise in the pilot’s forward line of sight.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain terrain clearance during a low-level aerial application flight, which resulted in impact with terrain and a subsequent forced landing. Contributing to the accident was the location of the spray boom pressure gauge, which required the pilot to divert his attention away from the airplane’s flight path, and the operator’s decision to locate the spray boom pressure gauge outside of the cockpit.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA318
- Event ID
- 20240816194940
- Case number
- CEN24LA318
- 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: 0916020503430e3afc8cb7007335db2d0e1bd714c8e9d025aa75fdf22e2a4a4b; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:10:27.575Z.