CHI00LA054 · Aerostar S49A
Aerostar S49A · Accident: hard landing
From Brandon, SD to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA054
- 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
Aerostar S49A
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar S49
- 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
- N6316U
- Operator
- Deborah A. Husby · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brandon, SDTo 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Balloon equipment, burner system › Disconnected
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was coming in to land in a field 6 miles south of Flandreau, South Dakota. During the landing attempt, a wind gust collapsed the front of the envelope. The pilot said at that point she knew she was committed to that field and 'that it would be a rough, high-wind landing.' The balloon touched down and 'rebounded.' The pilot pulled in the redline to deflate the envelope. When the balloon touched down the second time, it began to drag along the ground. 'As I was reaching up with my right hand to continue pulling the redline in more, I saw the burner come completely off it's mounting and fall down toward the basket.' The pilot said that there was a flame coming from the burner. 'I continued dragging for 3 or 4 seconds trying to stop the balloon and batting the burner away. It slowed enough so I could get out and I saw the skirt, the lower edge of the envelope and the upper cordura was burned/burning.' Examination of the balloon revealed no anomalies. The Aviation Routine Weather Report for Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 25 miles from the accident site at 188 degrees, 11 minutes after the accident, was clear skies, 10 miles visibility, and winds 150 degrees at 12 knots. A witness who was flying at the same time in another balloon, said that when he was landing 'the ground wind speed quickly increased on one approach to near 15 miles per hour.' When the witness did land his balloon, 'the winds were back in the vicinity of 10 miles per hour.'
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions, and the burner becoming disconnected from the balloon's frame. A contributing factor was the high wind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA054
- Event ID
- 20001212X20214
- Case number
- CHI00LA054
- 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: 9625d9597171ec1377ca118612736be642e9f6961a70da7140d7b722e4ffb1a8; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:19:29.040Z.