CHI02LA169 · Lindstrand Balloons 90A
Lindstrand Balloons 90A · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Waukesha, WI to WI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02LA169
- 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
Lindstrand Balloons 90A
- Aircraft type
- Lindstrand 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
- N40051
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waukesha, WITo WI
- 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
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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 › Weather evaluation, inadequate
- Weather condition › High wind
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The balloon flight made a hard landing in 12-15 knots winds seriously injuring one of the two passengers aboard. The pilot delayed the flight and checked the weather several times before arriving at the launch site where the decision to launch was made. The pilot released two pibals at his residence located about 10 miles northeast of the launch site. The first pibal, released 1 hour and 10 minutes before the flight, headed towards 120-130 degrees at 12 knots. The second pibal, released 50 minutes before the flight, traveled in the same direction at a slower speed. During the drive to the launch site, the pilot noticed darkening skies and clouds to the northwest which he queried about when he called for an updated weather briefing. About 30 minutes after departure, the pilot noticed a breeze with a 190 degree change in wind direction and a decrease in speed. They proceeded westbound and began an ascent to 400 feet agl to clear power lines at which time the balloon was traveling about 15 knots towards the west. The pilot then descended to look for a landing area and stated that a gust pushed the balloon into trees during a landing approach. He heated the balloon, which was traveling about 12 knots, in order to get through the trees and attempted another landing. He told his passengers to prepare for a fast landing as they were traveling about 12-15 knots. The balloon came to rest 100 yards from the initial point of impact. Weather radar indicated an area of convective activity about 24 miles west of the accident site.
Probable cause
The inadequate weather evaluation by the pilot and high winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02LA169
- Event ID
- 20020626X00976
- Case number
- CHI02LA169
- 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 2002-06-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 845d6c996eb8c02c1e75e91ed5628abb131f7f3cf7f177698e3ad9b17cf29943; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:38:19.818Z.