FTW00LA152 · Cameron V-90
Airventure Balloon Port Cameron V-90 · Accident: hard landing
From Plano, TX (no airport) to Frisco, TX (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA152
- 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
Cameron V-90
- Aircraft type
- Cameron V-90
- 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
- N6012C
- Operator
- Airventure Balloon Port
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Plano, TX (no airport)To Frisco, TX (no airport)
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Passenger briefing, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to landing the balloon, the pilot informed the two passengers that they 'were going to make a fast approach, and it was going to be a hard landing.' He instructed the passengers to 'face the direction the balloon was traveling, bend their knees and hold on to rope handles or the tanks.' When the balloon impacted the ground and 'started a drag', one of the passengers 'lost her grip' and was ejected. While trying to reach for the passenger, the pilot and the other passenger were ejected. The two passengers fell to the ground, and the basket traveled over one of the passengers, who received three cracked ribs. The pilot maintained a grip on the deflation line; however, the balloon ascended approximately 20 feet agl before descending and coming to rest on the ground. The pilot reported the wind speed on landing was 12 knots. A weather reporting station (12 miles east of the accident site) reported the wind speed at 6 knots. The Cameron Balloons US Flight Manual states, in part, 'If it will be a high wind landing or a landing during a rapid vertical descent and it is expected that the basket may rebound or tip over or drag on a corner, the passengers should be briefed to face away from the direction of flight, hold on to the interior basket handle or tank collar in front of them, and crouch slightly. This position is most likely to prevent them from being thrown from the basket on impact or while dragging. It is most critical that the pilot remain in the basket during the landing process.'
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate passenger briefing for a high wind landing. A factor was the wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA152
- Event ID
- 20001212X20999
- Case number
- FTW00LA152
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-05-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7693208c67fac229f4b4d4a5087e06371d63ee4680fb3949fd4a06bf25260e59; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:39:11.477Z.