CEN25LA303 · Air Tractor Inc AT-400A
Black Dog Aviation Air Tractor Inc AT-400A · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA303
- 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-400A
- Aircraft type
- Air Tractor AT-400
- 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
- N3157B
- Operator
- Black Dog Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1982)
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- 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 reported that after loading the airplane with fuel and product, he taxied the full length of the runway and began the takeoff roll. After takeoff, he flew the airplane above the runway in ground effect; however, the airplane settled back to the runway. The pilot stated that he was uncomfortable continuing the takeoff, so he aborted the takeoff by applying brakes and reducing engine power. To avoid nosing the airplane over and locking the tailwheel, he abruptly pulled back on the control stick. The airplane ballooned and came back down hard on the runway. The pilot did not want to impact houses and buildings on the side of the runway, so he kept the airplane aligned with the remaining runway. The airplane impacted shrubs and trees and came to rest in a ditch at the end of the runway. The wings and fuselage sustained substantial damaged. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airplane control during an aborted takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA303
- Event ID
- 20250804200696
- Case number
- CEN25LA303
- 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: 0620e669c7175bece60ba79ef85540d3e3157832a9923c1676ee518286d6ce94; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:10:11.566Z.