LAX03LA097 · Firefly 11B
Firefly 11B · Accident during takeoff
From Yountville, CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA097
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 1
- 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
Firefly 11B
- Aircraft type
- Firefly 11
- 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
- N1501H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yountville, CATo 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
- None
Cause areas
- Other person › Impairment(drugs)
- Other person › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A bystander sustained fatal injuries after falling from a balloon. Although the scheduled flight had been canceled, the pilot was going to lift the balloon several hundred feet into the air so that the passengers could take a picture of the balloon in flight. As the balloon was being repositioned by five members of a ground crew, two bystanders grabbed onto the basket and it ascended more than the pilot had planned. She called to everyone to release. The five crew members and one bystander released; however, one bystander continued holding onto the balloon. During the ascent, the pilot realized the bystander was hanging on and told him to hang on while she descended. However, the bystander was unable to hold on and fell to his death. Tetrahydrocannabinol (marijuana) levels in the bystander suggested use within the hour and significant impairment.
Probable cause
A bystander was impaired by drugs and did not follow the pilot's directive to release the balloon as it began its ascent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA097
- Event ID
- 20030228X00271
- Case number
- LAX03LA097
- 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: 992d2aa515852d1eca60a0dd7d63c9f591a58e31d831b5a3b12f26f7707b9e89; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:26:39.683Z.