DEN99FA004 · Cameron A-250
Cameron A-250 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From No airport to Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99FA004
- 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
- 1 · 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-250
- Aircraft type
- Cameron A-250
- 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
- N4557W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The balloon was making a landing approach on a 165 degree heading. The pilot said that he thought he was 50 to 60 feet above the oncoming wires when the balloon began to descend. The balloon impacted the wires, and was subsequently extracted from them due to a large heat input just prior to wire impact. The balloon proceeded eastbound and climbed to 600 feet agl. The pilot began a stabilized descent, and the balloon again turned southbound. He selected a landing site which had transmission wires on the approach edge of the field. He began a descending approach over the wires believing that he had approximately 20 feet of clearance. The balloon's descent suddenly increased, and the pilot began heating the envelope. The balloon impacted the second set of wires, and the basket fell to the ground. Balloon training procedures recommended that during a landing over wires, the wires be approached in level, or ascending flight. The balloon's Flight Manual states: 'if contact with electric wires becomes inevitable, rip out the top to ensure that the basket is as close to the ground as possible before contact.'
Probable cause
The pilot not planning his approach to a landing so as to fly over the transmission wires (on the approach edge of the landing field) in level flight or ascending flight, and the pilot not pulling out the rip panel for emanate contact with transmission wires as the owner's manual directs. A factor was the wind shear weather condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99FA004
- Event ID
- 20001211X11231
- Case number
- DEN99FA004
- 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: 377464ef399fba22d3e82a8e71322b6f82f0a5f82aae837d34dd931f7f7a6627; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:22:31.997Z.