MIA00LA179 · Aerostar S57-A
Aerostar S57-A · Accident: on ground/water encounter with weather while standing
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA179
- 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 S57-A
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar S57
- 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
- N6341V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Standing
- 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
- On ground/water encounter with weather
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The balloon was tethered with a three-point, 3/4-inch rope top harness system, anchored on the upwind sides to two trees and on the downwind side to a truck. The last four passengers boarded, and the pilot was waiting for the wind speed to decrease when the balloon was suddenly launched on its own and was thrown to the top of the harness, about 80 feet, in less then 2 seconds. The pilot initiated emergency procedures, but was unsuccessful in bringing the balloon back to the ground, because the force of the wind was pushing the balloon upward. The two upwind lines broke leaving the balloon dangling about 100 feet in the air over power lines. After 30 seconds the downwind line broke initiating free flight. The pilot was able to stabilize the balloon enough to initiate an emergency landing. The balloon impacted with trees about 1/8 of a mile downwind of the original tether site.
Probable cause
an in-flight collision with a tree. A factor in this accident was high wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA179
- Event ID
- 20001212X21086
- Case number
- MIA00LA179
- 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: 6b43a774f02c0ccc854f839da0a98de4a55e79e551fd6467e7649dfcbb5a21d6; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:52:04.054Z.