LAX98LA005 · Balloon Works FIREFLY 11
Balloon Works FIREFLY 11 · Accident: hard landing
From Encinitas, CA (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA005
- 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 FIREFLY 11
- Aircraft type
- Balloon Works FIREFLY 11
- 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
- N2585Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Encinitas, CA (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
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, initiated
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Weather condition › High wind
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and 10 passengers departed for a scenic late afternoon flight. The takeoff occurred in wind conditions near the FAA demonstrated 7 knot maximum speed (for landing), and at a time when local airports reported 10 knot surface winds. For several minutes during the flight the pilot flew in clouds. The passengers reported hearing the sound of an airplane and became concerned. During the flight the wind speed increased. The pilot landed hard in over 12 knots of wind. The basket slid 150 to 180 feet, rotated 90 degrees, and tumbled end over end ejecting passengers.
Probable cause
The pilot's intentional flight in high wind conditions and his improper in-flight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA005
- Event ID
- 20001208X09054
- Case number
- LAX98LA005
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-10-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d99add430a49da7135d75216f0429d3c36100c99c2341e286b0ed28d493e803a; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:46:53.198Z.