CEN25LA314 · Air Tractor Inc AT-502B
Midwest Custom Ag Aviation Air Tractor Inc AT-502B · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA314
- 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-502B
- 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
- N502WF
- Operator
- Midwest Custom Ag Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that during the landing flare the airplane suddenly pitched up and climbed about 25 feet. She reported that after she re-stabilized, the nose of the airplane suddenly yawed 15-20° to the right. She corrected the nose back to align with the runway centerline and the nose suddenly yawed 15-20° to the left. She attempted to go around by adding engine power, but the airplane yawed about 90° to the right, impacted the ground and slid across the grass resulting in substantial damage to the left wing. The pilot reported that she believed a dust devil may have been the cause of the airplane upset. According to a Surface Analysis chart, a surface wind trough was observed near the accident site around the time of the accident. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain aircraft control during the landing and go-around with variable wind direction and speed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA314
- Event ID
- 20250811200748
- Case number
- CEN25LA314
- 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: 8cbaa6c64d6cd75a387a777abdbeeb0ef8fdea246e6c3fef7ebdccafeb450821; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:11:54.452Z.