LAX97LA118 · Balloon Works AX-8B
Balloon Works AX-8B · Accident: uncontrolled altitude deviation while maneuvering
From P20 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA118
- 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
Balloon Works AX-8B
- Aircraft type
- Balloon Works AX-8
- 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
- N9033H
- Operator
- Gary B. Eaton · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From P20To 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Uncontrolled altitude deviation
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After about 15 minutes on a 'Hare and Hound' flight, the pilot noticed a drop in fuel pressure (while flying at a low altitude). He switched fuel tanks, but the balloon had begun to descend. The pilot attempted to stop the descent by using a good tank, but the balloon continued to lose altitude and landed hard on flat terrain, before the descent could be stopped. The pilot and other pilots reported low level wind shear in the area at the time. No mechanical malfunction was reported.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate in-flight planning, which resulted in an excessive descent and subsequent hard landing, due to a drop in fuel pressure along with shifting winds at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA118
- Event ID
- 20001208X07572
- Case number
- LAX97LA118
- 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: c14f0ecb2962c78b1e7345fb9b888ac2ca38ad05cc1f1f4ddffc75740b4e9d0d; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:13:14.818Z.