Juliana’s Fire Boss Crash: Task Overload During a Water Scoop

What Happened

The lead pilot called for the water scoop to be aborted because of a tailwind. The second airplane did not acknowledge the call. It continued along the lake, drifting toward the shoreline and a rock face.

On July 10, 2024, an Air Tractor AT-802A Fire Boss, N10122, crashed during a water scoop near Helena, Montana. The pilot died. The airplane was part of a four-aircraft group supporting aerial firefighting operations. The accident occurred on its first scoop sequence after the group reached the operating area.

The lead airplane lifted off after the lead pilot recognized a tailwind and aborted the scoop. As it climbed away, the accident airplane was descending toward the water. Witnesses described the second airplane as moving unsteadily. Its left wing dipped, the right wing rose, and it veered left before striking the rock face.

The NTSB used witness accounts and flight-tracking data to reconstruct that movement. During the final 1,447 feet of the water run, the airplane drifted about ten degrees left. The drift carried it away from the middle of the waterway and toward the shoreline. It occurred at the same time that the lead airplane was turning left after lifting off.

The accident pilot did not take evasive action before impact. That observation did not, by itself, explain why. Investigators examined the airplane, the pilot's training history, the tactical workload, and toxicology evidence before reaching their conclusion.

Investigation Findings

This was the pilot's first fire season. According to the NTSB, training records showed occasions when tactical flying demands caused her situational awareness to deteriorate. When that happened, fundamental flying skills regressed, and she sometimes froze at the controls.

Those records gave the investigation a relevant comparison for the accident sequence. The pilot was operating close to the water in a multi-airplane environment, during a task that required continuous directional control as well as attention to the other aircraft and radio instructions. The lead pilot's abort instruction went unacknowledged. The accident airplane drifted toward terrain without an evasive response.

The NTSB concluded that the pilot likely experienced a similar degradation in performance to the one documented during training. Its probable-cause finding identified task overload, loss of situational awareness, and failure to maintain directional control. That is a more specific finding than simply saying the airplane turned toward a cliff. It connects what happened to the demands placed on the pilot during the scoop.

The simultaneity of the lead airplane's turn and the accident airplane's drift is part of the recorded evidence. It does not establish exactly where the accident pilot was looking or what she was thinking. Those details should not be invented to make the sequence sound more complete. The investigation's conclusion rests on the flightpath, lack of evasive action, and documented training concerns.

Postaccident examination found no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have prevented normal operation. The evidence therefore did not support explaining the drift as a known mechanical failure of the airplane.

Toxicology required similar care. A low level of cetirizine was found in the pilot's blood, and a very low concentration of morphine was found in urine. The NTSB considered significant impairment from either finding unlikely. It also noted that the morphine result was nonspecific and could follow opioid use or poppy seed consumption. The existence of a laboratory detection was not treated as proof of impairment, and the probable cause did not attribute the accident to drugs.

NTSB Probable Cause

The pilot’s loss of situational awareness during the water scoop due to task overload while operating in a multi-airplane tactical firefighting environment, which resulted in the pilot’s failure to maintain directional control and the airplane’s collision with terrain.

Safety Lessons

Training performance needs to be assessed in the environment where the pilot will work. A pilot may execute individual maneuvers successfully while struggling when tactical demands accumulate. In this case, the training history described a particular problem under workload, and the NTSB found a comparable loss of performance during the accident sequence. Operators can use that kind of evidence to define additional training, supervision, or operating restrictions.

An unacknowledged safety instruction deserves attention within a team's procedures. The lead pilot's abort call did not produce a response from the second airplane. The general lesson is to establish how teams handle a missed acknowledgment before the operation begins, rather than assuming every transmitted instruction has been received and acted on. This is a procedural consideration drawn from the event, not a claim that a particular unrecorded intervention would certainly have prevented it.

The airplane's flightpath remains the immediate priority during a demanding task. The scoop was part of a larger firefighting mission, but the developing danger was local: the airplane was moving away from the center of the lake toward terrain. Task management and crew or formation coordination should protect the attention needed to recognize and correct that movement.

Accident discussion should separate findings from speculation about the person involved. The report documents training concerns and a loss of situational awareness. It does not give access to the pilot's thoughts. Likewise, toxicology detections should be reported with the investigators' assessment of their significance, rather than presented as an independent explanation for the crash.

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Sources and References

• NTSB final report: WPR24FA238
• NTSB preliminary report: WPR24FA238
• NTSB investigation docket: WPR24FA238