DEN03LA019 · Cameron Balloons O-70
Cameron Balloons O-70 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Montrose, CO (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA019
- 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 O-70
- Aircraft type
- Cameron O-70
- 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
- N5303Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montrose, CO (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
- Approach
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Weather condition › Unfavorable wind
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 this was his second flight of the morning, and the wind was approximately 3 knots. He said that during the flight, the wind increased to approximately 10 knots. During a landing attempt in an open field, the pilot said the basket struck a fence, subsequently spilling the occupants onto the ground. The balloon flew for an additional 8 to 10 minutes before the balloon's basket caught on a second fence. The ground crew retrieved the balloon, which incurred no damage.
Probable cause
the unforecasted increase in wind velocity. A contributing factor was the fence that the basket struck, subsequently spilling the occupants onto the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA019
- Event ID
- 20021203X05551
- Case number
- DEN03LA019
- 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, 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: f801ef7d9fa19c0d24f059c41b69a5ef210da50569fa225f90f4a7913a63a753; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:32:43.337Z.