Gone West: Air Tractor Founder Leland Snow | Aero-News Network
Aero-News Network
RSS icon RSS feed
podcast icon MP3 podcast
Subscribe Aero-News e-mail Newsletter Subscribe

Airborne Unlimited -- Most Recent Daily Episodes

Episode Date

Airborne-Monday

Airborne-Tuesday

Airborne-Wednesday Airborne-Thursday

Airborne-Friday

Airborne On YouTube

Airborne-Unlimited-10.06.25

AirborneNextGen-
10.07.25

Airborne-Unlimited-10.08.25

Airborne-FlightTraining-10.09.25

AirborneUnlimited-10.10.25

Tue, Feb 22, 2011

Gone West: Air Tractor Founder Leland Snow

Considered By Many To Be The Father Of Modern Aerial Spraying

The following article was sent to us by an ANN reader. It was written by Bill Lavender, and was posted on his website. It appears here in its entirety with Mr. Lavender's permission.


Leland Snow Photograph Reproduced With Permission

Leland Snow, founder and President of Air Tractor, Inc., and the inventor of modern aerial spray aircraft, died Sunday morning, February 20, 2011 while jogging near his home. He was 80 years old.

Snow leaves behind a 53-year legacy of aircraft design and innovations that ushered in the era of the modern aerial spray plane. Air Tractor, the company he founded in 1972, produces the world's most popular aerial spray aircraft and single engine air tankers for aerial firefighting. The company's product line includes 400, 500, 600 800 and 1,000-gallon capacity aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney piston or turbine engines. They are used for agricultural purposes, forest and wildfire fighting, narcotic crop eradication, fuel-hauling, fighting locust plagues, and cleaning up oil spills in coastal waters. Air Tractor aircraft are found working not only across the United States, but around the globe, in Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, North and South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Macedonia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

Leland Snow designed his first aerial spray airplane, the S-1, in 1951. The 23-year old Snow completed test flights with the S-1 in 1953. Snow's S-1 flew dusting and spraying jobs in the Texas Rio Grande Valley and in Nicaragua until 1957. He followed-up the S-1 with the models S-2A and S-2B, which were built when Snow moved to production facilities in Olney, Texas in 1958.

FMI: www.agairupdate.com

Advertisement

More News

ANN's Daily Aero-Term (10.13.25): Homing [ICAO]

Homing [ICAO] The procedure of using the direction-finding equipment of one radio station with the emission of another radio station, where at least one of the stations is mobile, >[...]

ANN's Daily Aero-Linx (10.13.25)

Aero Linx: European Regions Airline Association (ERA) The European Regions Airline Association (ERA) represents a diverse membership of over 50 airlines and more than 150 associate>[...]

ANN FAQ: Q&A 101

A Few Questions AND Answers To Help You Get MORE Out of ANN! 1) I forgot my password. How do I find it? 1) Easy... click here and give us your e-mail address--we'll send it to you >[...]

NTSB Prelim: CubCrafters Carbon Cub

While On Short Final, About 300 Ft, The Pilot Performed A Forced Landing Near Trees On September 7, 2025, about 0932 eastern daylight time, a CubCrafters Carbon Cub EX airplane, N4>[...]

ANN's Daily Aero-Term (10.14.25): Severe Icing

Severe Icing The rate of ice accumulation is such that ice protection systems fail to remove the accumulation of ice and ice accumulates in locations not normally prone to icing, s>[...]

blog comments powered by Disqus



Advertisement

Advertisement

Podcasts

Advertisement

© 2007 - 2025 Web Development & Design by Pauli Systems, LC