MIA98LA134 · American Blimp Corp. A-1-50
American Blimp Corp. A-1-50 · Accident: in flight collision with object while taxiing
From Tallahassee, FL to Quincy Municipal Airport (2J9)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA98LA134
- 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
American Blimp Corp. A-1-50
- Aircraft type
- American Blimp A-1
- Category
- Blimp
- 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
- N151LG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tallahassee, FLTo Quincy Municipal Airport (2J9)
- 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
- Taxi · aerial
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Ground personnel › Weather evaluation, improper
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot expected the winds to be from the south at 12 to 17 knots. While approaching the ground based mast for mooring from the north, with the groundcrew in control of the blimp, a gust of wind from the right, estimated to be at about 30 knots, acted on the blimp blowing it toward trees to the east. The pilot attempted to regain control and avoid the trees by adding full engine power. This was unsuccessful and the blimp contacted the trees and the air bag was torn open. The gondola descended and landed hard causing the right landing gear to collapse.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's and groundcrew chief's failure to properly evaluate wind conditions prior to attempting to moor the blimp.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98LA134
- Event ID
- 20001211X09919
- Case number
- MIA98LA134
- 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: 32dc9ec1218aed99fd9241338f1e0e83006b978f7ddef5927d6854709cdd843b; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:53:08.401Z.