NYC95LA160 · Raven S-60A
Raven S-60A · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Greenfield, MA (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC95LA160
- 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
Raven S-60A
- Aircraft type
- Raven S-60
- 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
- N4214A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenfield, MA (no airport)To 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 · descent
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Deerfield, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot arrived at a balloon festival at 0530 hours and obtained a weather briefing from three other pilots and the balloon meister. He determined that thunderstorms were due in the area at about 1000 hours. He departed with two passengers at 0620 hours. The pilot subsequently encountered a wind shift and strong gusting winds. He reported that the balloon throat closed due to the winds. After that, the balloon began descending and collided with trees. About 25 miles south at Westfield, Ma, the 0645 edt wind was from 090 degrees at 5 knots; at 0745 edt, the wind had changed to 360 degrees at 20 knots with gusts to 40 knots. About 60 miles northwest of the departure point at Albany, severe thunderstorms with heavy rain and wind squalls were reported at 0650 hours. The peak wind at Albany was reorted to be from 310 degrees at 67 knots at 0641.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate evaluation of the weather, which resulted in an encounter with unfavorable winds and an inflight loss of control. The unfavorable/high winds and sudden wind gusts were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC95LA160
- Event ID
- 20001207X04064
- Case number
- NYC95LA160
- 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: 10935d351520de302780ad42a635c98c13ad9d37a4890db2ea97e4730f86c448; retrieved 2026-09-21T13:11:22.055Z.