LAX96FA169 · Cameron A-210
Cameron A-210 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From 8533 · AZ to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96FA169
- 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
- 2 · 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
Cameron A-210
- Aircraft type
- Cameron A-210
- 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
- N6085C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 8533 · 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
- Landing
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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 › Fuel supply, improper use of
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A flight of four balloons was landing in a prearranged open area after completion of a sight-seeing local area tour. During the landing, the pilot of N6085C did not turn off the fuel tanks or the pilot light burners as required by the flight manual for high wind landings. During the landing, the balloon's basket drug about 422 feet along the ground before it tipped onto its side. The basket then dragged about 69 feet before the previously installed wooden upright rods broke and the basket flipped inverted and came to a stop. After the balloon had stopped, someone inadvertently actuated the burner's blast valve, and a fire immediately erupted. All but one of the occupants evacuated the basket. The operator reported that on the day preceding the accident, the nylon upright rods broke during inflation of the balloon, and they were replaced with wooden upright rods. Examination showed no evidence of any preexisting fuel tank system malfunction or failure. The manufacturer's proprietary drawings showed that only nylon or lexan rods were to be used; this requirement, however, was not specifically noted in the balloon's flight or maintenance manual. The Cameron Balloon Parts Catalog specifically required the approved upright rods.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to follow the flight manual procedure by not turning off the burner's pilot shutoff valves. Factors relating to the accident were: the installation of improper (unapproved wooden) upright rods by company maintenance personnel, subsequent failure of the upright rods, and the manufacturer's unclear information concerning the replacement parts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96FA169
- Event ID
- 20001208X05596
- Case number
- LAX96FA169
- 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: 0f59da183f063c347bb0910808f8ebc8484d4e8037c8c67f891c3da03382193a; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:22:56.770Z.