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NYC01LA150 · Raven S60A

9 Jun 2001 · Mumford, NY, United States

Raven S60A · Accident during takeoff

From Mumford, NY (no airport) to an unrecorded destination

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Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.

Event

NTSB case
NYC01LA150
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
Unknown
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

Raven S60A

Aircraft type
Raven S60
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
N28282
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Mumford, NY (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
Takeoff
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
Miscellaneous/other
DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
Minor

Cause areas

  • Ground personnel › Panic
  • Ground personnel › Procedures/directives, not followed

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

While the balloon was aloft in tethered flight, it was caught by a gust of wind, and began to descend rapidly. The pilot added heat to slow the descent, and once the basket contacted the ground, ground crew handlers grabbed handling lines to hold it down. The basket bounced, and the balloon began to ascend. One handler shouted to let go, and two of the three handlers released the basket. A third handler reported that she became "very scared, and froze" on her line. She continued to hold on until she lost her grip when the basket was 15-20 feet in the air. Upon hitting the ground, she suffered a broken leg.

Probable cause

The ground handler's failure to follow instructions to release her line during the balloon's unintended ascent, due to panic.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record NYC01LA150
Event ID
20010703X01299
Case number
NYC01LA150
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: 8c7c74bca880fd21127c5489c9c176515054a9e526b8deebf1b9bbe83c05e49f; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:05:44.167Z.