FTW96LA059 · Thunder and Colt AX9-140
Thunder and Colt AX9-140 · Accident: hard landing
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA059
- 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
Thunder and Colt AX9-140
- Aircraft type
- Thunder And Colt AX9
- 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
- N9606A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Weather condition › High wind
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot obtained a weather briefing about 1 hour and 15 minutes prior to the balloon flight. About 30 to 35 minutes into the flight, winds increased, and the balloon was pushed over a wilderness area with ridges and canyons. Several approaches were abandoned due to power lines. Winds increased to 35 knots and the passengers were briefed for a hard landing. During the landing, the pilot was ejected from the balloon. Passengers grabbed the vent line and continued to pull until the balloon came to a stop. The total drag distance was 300 to 400 feet.
Probable cause
the high winds and the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA059
- Event ID
- 20001207X05001
- Case number
- FTW96LA059
- 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, damage. 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: 93d136a28ffba36ed753e229c03bdac13864bab762e113a837b5190f6517ddac; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:58:28.324Z.