LAX99LA093 · Aerostar RX-9
Aerostar RX-9 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Phoenix, AZ to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA093
- 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
Aerostar RX-9
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar RX-9
- Category
- Balloon
- 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
- N91067
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flight into adverse weather, attempted
- Pilot in command › Weather forecast, disregarded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 53-minute-long sightseeing flight with fare-paying passengers was flown mostly over open fields. During the flight the pilot encountered surface wind which increased in speed from about 3 knots during takeoff to 15 knots during landing. Approaching the landing field adjacent to residential homes, the pilot encountered an estimated 20-knot wind gust. The envelope lost volume, and despite the pilot's effort to arrest the descent by firing both burners, the balloon rapidly lost altitude. The basket impacted the roofs of two houses, tipped 90 degrees sideways, and impacted the ground. The basket was dragged about 300 feet before finally coming to a stop. The pilot did not report experiencing any mechanical problems during the flight. About 3 hours prior to taking off the pilot received a weather briefing in which 27-knot winds were forecast as low as 1,500 feet above the ground. Additionally, a 10-knot surface wind was predicted in the general area, with temporary increases to 12 knots, and gusts to 20 knots within 30 minutes of the accident. Contrary to the balloon's FAA approved flight manual requirements, the passengers were not wearing protective helmets during the hard, high wind landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempted flight in an area of forecasted high winds and his inadequate compensation for those wind conditions once encountered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA093
- Event ID
- 20001205X00185
- Case number
- LAX99LA093
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 77df82cb4363683f5041a9a60cb5bcf51bb04d578ee33bcfe0dda8f05e02e21e; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:12:22.547Z.