NYC98LA199 · Balloon Works FIREFLY AX-9 FIREFLY AX
Balloon Works FIREFLY AX-9 FIREFLY AX · Accident during landing
From Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA199
- 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 AX-9 FIREFLY AX
- Aircraft type
- Balloon Works FIREFLY AX-9
- 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
- N3141C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brookhaven Calabro Airport (HWV), NYTo 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Passenger › Passenger briefing, not complied with
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The hot air balloon was on a local flight with a pilot and six passengers. The passengers were instructed on how to flex their knees at landing. The pilot reported that prior to landing, he instructed a passenger to either hang onto the balloon structure or him. The passenger remembered the pilot saying it would be a hard landing and to hang onto him, which she did. Upon touchdown, she lost her grip, and sat or fell to the bottom of the basket. As she was going down, her right foot was pressed against a fuel tank and did not move. She fractured some bones in her right ankle. The pilot reported that he flexed his knees at touchdown as was his standard practice, and remained standing along with the other five passengers. The pilot described the landing as soft, and another balloon pilot who watched the landing said it did not appear to be hard. The injured passenger and another passenger onboard the balloon described the landing as hard, with a bounce. The winds were described as 5 to 6 knots.
Probable cause
The failure of the passenger to comply with the pilot briefing, and properly brace herself for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA199
- Event ID
- 20001211X10949
- Case number
- NYC98LA199
- 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: 5eeb073c2cbc0875762c4d7f2434d2f19d61ec68b373abfe8cd5d49ddf83ee51; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:21:34.833Z.