FTW02LA059 · Cameron Balloons Z-90
Cameron Balloons Z-90 · Accident: hard landing
From Albuquerque, NM to Moriarty, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA059
- 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
Cameron Balloons Z-90
- Aircraft type
- Cameron Z-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
- N984ZS
- Operator
- Michael P. Collins · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albuquerque, NMTo Moriarty, NM
- 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 › Flight into adverse weather, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departing for the cross-country balloon flight, the pilot received a weather briefing from an Automated Flight Service Station. The pilot was briefed that the wind speed was 28 mph on top of the mountains the flight was to cross. The pilot reported that "we decided that it was a little fast but doable." The pilot reported that he was unable to obtain weather information for his destination prior to the flight due to the lack of weather reporting facilities east of the mountains. The balloon departed with a light and variable wind. The balloon ascended to 11,250 feet msl and its ground speed increased to 52 mph as it crossed over the mountains. After crossing the mountains, the balloon descended to 500 feet agl, where the wind speed was 32 mph. As the flight continued, the pilot selected a field and attempted a high wind landing. During the landing sequence the pilot and a passenger were ejected from the basket. The balloon then took off and ascended to 1,000 feet with the remaining passenger, who was a balloon pilot. The passenger took control of the balloon and landed safely 6 miles from where the pilot and passenger were ejected.
Probable cause
inadvertent flight into adverse (high wind) weather conditions, which resulted in a hard landing. A contributing factor was the high wind weather condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA059
- Event ID
- 20011227X02453
- Case number
- FTW02LA059
- 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, damage. 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: 309e0b5fe7faccf5ff6c091ddf6f29b334f1c280dd991c9545b631f5c78883be; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:42:56.127Z.