CHI02LA002 · Worner 1000 STU
Worner 1000 STU · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Albuquerque, NM to Liberal, KS
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA002
- 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
Worner 1000 STU
- Aircraft type
- Worner 1000
- 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
- D-OAGH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albuquerque, NMTo Liberal, KS
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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 adverse weather, inadvertent
- Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area › Encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said their gas balloon was cruising at 3,000 feet agl over the Liberal, Kansas, area when they experienced a microburst. The pilot said they suddenly found themselves heading for the ground at a very high rate of descent. The pilot said they dropped ballast to try and slow their descent. He said he then saw that his angle of descent was going to take the balloon into power lines along a road. The pilot said he opened the vent and put the basket on the road. The envelope went into the power lines, tore open, caught fire, and burned. At the time of the accident the aviation routine weather report for Dodge City, Kansas, 60 miles northeast of the accident site, reported clear skies, 10 miles visibility, and winds of 180 degrees at 19 knots with gusts to 25 knots. The report also stated in the remarks that peak winds of 31 knots were recorded at 1600. The balloon was part of a gas balloon race associated with the annual Albuquerque Balloon Festival in which the contestants try to cover the farthest distance within a three day period.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent flight into adverse weather conditions during cruise flight and the unsuitable landing area encountered during the uncontrolled descent. Factors relating to this accident were the high wind, the pilot's unsuccessful attempt to compensate for the wind conditions, the pilot's unsuccessful attempt to avoid the power lines during the landing, and the power lines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA002
- Event ID
- 20011012X02084
- Case number
- CHI02LA002
- 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, coordinates. 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: e297202fe43275b4646b5f8d2b5d39907f3e47429a685cbef24161574dff03fc; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:31:51.891Z.