CEN25LA164 · Air Tractor AT802 A
Air Tractor AT802 A · Accident: missing aircraft
From St. John's International Airport (CYYT) to Santa Maria Airport (LPAZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA164
- 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
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Air Tractor AT802 A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT802
- 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
- N4025K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. John's International Airport (CYYT), St. John'sTo Santa Maria Airport (LPAZ), Santa Maria
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2025)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Missing aircraft
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The float equipped airplane was en route on a ferry flight from St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, to Santa Maria, Portugal, when 130 nautical miles east-southeast of St. John’s, the airplane disappeared from radar over the Atlantic Ocean. An emergency locator transmitter was activated shortly after.
Search and rescue assets discovered one of the two pontoons, a plastic container containing a backpack, a seat cushion, and an empty life raft floating on the ocean surface in the vicinity where the airplane went missing. An oil slick was also observed on the water next to the pontoon. The search continued through the following day. The airplane and pilot have not been located.
ADS-B information showed the airplane took off and climbed to approximately 6,000 ft msl and proceeded on an easterly heading. About 21 minutes into the flight, the pilot reported picking up ice and requested a higher altitude. He was cleared and climbed to 7,000 ft. About 35 minutes into the flight, the airplane made a slight right turn and proceeded east-southeast. About 1 hour and 6 minutes into the flight, the airplane began a 2,000 ft/min. descent to the ocean surface. Just before reaching the surface, the airplane made a 180o turn toward the west. ADS-B data ended 1 hour and 10 minutes after takeoff.
Probable cause
The airplane’s impact with the ocean for undetermined reasons based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA164
- Event ID
- 20250501200088
- Case number
- CEN25LA164
- 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: 91dd0d8bb9bfef1ee25455a388f205260cc2acc4e836362c2b2c095da4bfb0b9; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:04:26.394Z.