Air Tractor celebrates 50 years

Air Tractor airplanes have played many roles since Leland Snow founded the agricultural aircraft manufacturer in Olney 50 years ago, including crop duster, firefighter, movie star, and military aircraft. The company, an employer, charitable giver, and worldwide ambassador for Olney, marks a half century of growth and innovation and more than 4,000 aircraft delivered at a party for its employee-owners and local, state, and federal dignitaries on May 31 at the Air Tractor plant.

Among the guests at the dinner will be Jason Wilcox, the son of Air Tractor’s first customer, Mike Wilcox, owner of ag spraying operation Burkes Flying Service in Rio Hondo, Texas. Mike Wilcox purchased Air Tractor serial number one in the spring of 1974 and went on to purchase ten more airplanes. Mike Wilcox used the planes over the next three decades for crop dust- ing, knocking frost off crops and firefighting, his son said. He retired in 2000 and died in 2019, two months shy of his 80th birthday.

“Dad loved that airplane,” said Jason Wilcox, who was two years old when his dad bought the AT-301.

“These planes are so beautiful. From what they accomplished from the start, to where they are now. It’s just an amazing bird … I remember the airplane coming in. It was white and green. It’s jaw-dropping when you see it, especially in person.”

The ag planes turned heads at the Walt Disney Co’s animation studio, Pixar, which used an AT400A as the model for the character “Dusty” in the 2013 film “Planes.” The AT-802 single-engine air tanker carries water and fire retardant, and the AT-802 “Fire Boss” is equipped with water scooping floats to fight fires. Air Tractor has built more than 200 firefighting aircraft that are in service around the world, including at least 12 in service with Texas.

In 2022, Air Tractor added weapons and a sophisticated electronics package to the AT802 for the U.S. Special Operations Command’s AT-802U Sky Warden program. These airplanes are for “close air support, armed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and strike coordination missions to counter violent extremist organizations” in support of U.S. special operations missions.

The first Air Tractor was conceived by Leland Snow in the early 1970s after he sold his first company, Snow Aeronautical Company, to Rockwell-Standard in 1965. Mr. Snow left Rockwell-Standard (Rockwell International) in 1970 when the company moved the ag plane operations from Olney to Albany, Georgia.

In March 1970, in a one-room rented office in Wichita Falls, Mr. Snow began designing what would become the AT-300. The new designs would be Mr. Snow’s most advanced ag plane, with a powerful radial engine, aerodynamically sleek airframe, and a large capacity hopper, the company said.

Alone, he worked 10-hour days, six days a week, for the next two years on the production drawings, the engineering reports, and plans for the prototype construction, which began in July of 1972.

The company has grown from a four-person operation that delivered the first Air Tractor airplane – Mike Wilcox’s AT-301 – to more than 300 employees today and with Air Tractor airplanes working around the globe.