CEN26LA128 · Air Tractor Inc AT-502 B
Old River Applicators Air Tractor Inc AT-502 B · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Cut Off, LA (private airstrip) to Cut Off, LA (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA128
- 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-502 B
- 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
- N5063N
- Operator
- Old River Applicators
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cut Off, LA (private airstrip)To Cut Off, LA (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1997)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the aerial application airplane applied the liquid chemical load to a field of sugarcane. The airplane was returning to the private airstrip with an empty hopper when a total loss of engine power occurred. The pilot performed a forced landing to a wooded area. The airplane came to rest upright, and the pilot was able to egress from the airplane without further incident. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and to both wings. During the airplane recovery operation, less than two gallons of Jet A fuel were recovered from the two wing fuel tanks and the header fuel tank. The pilot reported that during the aerial application work, he lost track of the time, he spent more time in his low-level turns than needed, and the airplane ran out of fuel. The operator reported there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or the engine that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane was not equipped with a low fuel warning light system, nor was it required to be. According to the airframe manufacturer, a low fuel warning light system is available for certain serial numbered airplanes, and the retrofit installation is encouraged in two of their previously released service letters.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel planning and his failure to adequately monitor the fuel level during flight, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, and a total loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s lack of attention performing the task, which led to a loss of situational awareness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA128
- Event ID
- 20260302202571
- Case number
- CEN26LA128
- 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: f1055c87531b3f738bec783d82b5ab52355948b93c0f8fe0b6235d54cd4ec6b3; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:53:02.846Z.