FTW00LA004 · Lindstrand LBL-105G
Lindstrand LBL-105G · Accident: hard landing
From Albuquerque, NM (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA004
- 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
Lindstrand LBL-105G
- Aircraft type
- Lindstrand LBL-105
- 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
- GBWOK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albuquerque, NM (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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The balloon was participating in a long distance race and had been airborne for approximately 31.5 hours. The pilot had been aware of thunderstorms in the balloon's flight path for about 6.5 hours and had been attempting to track away from the storms, but was unable to do so. According to the pilot, the balloon was in level flight at 7,000 feet, above a cloud layer, when he initiated a precautionary landing to avoid an encounter with the thunderstorms. The balloon broke out at 1,280 feet agl in dark night light conditions. The balloon landed hard and then became airborne again reaching a height of 80 feet. During the second ground contact, the pilot was ejected from the basket, and subsequently, the basket 'dragged' over the pilot and then came to a stop. The pilot reported that the winds were from 360 degrees at 20 knots gusting to 22 knots. The pilot stated that 'improved met[eorological] information would have allowed a night landing to be made at 3 knots earlier rather than at 20 knots.'
Probable cause
The pilot's continued flight into known adverse weather, which resulted in a hard landing. Factors were the thunderstorms, dark night light conditions, and the high winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA004
- Event ID
- 20001212X19949
- Case number
- FTW00LA004
- 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: 31011f17cd1d1e9d349673ab029b1aabcea282cc4856392416bbf5fd0b142232; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:49:18.301Z.