LAX04CA003 · Balloon Works Inc FIREFLY II
Get Carried Away Hot Air Balloon Balloon Works Inc FIREFLY II · Accident while standing
From Phoenix, AZ to Phoenix, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04CA003
- 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
Balloon Works Inc FIREFLY II
- Aircraft type
- Balloon Works FIREFLY
- 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
- N7021U
- Operator
- Get Carried Away Hot Air Balloon
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix, AZTo Phoenix, AZ
- 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
- Standing
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft handling, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Diverted attention
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The balloon sustained fire damage to the envelope while it was on the ground. One of the passengers became ill during the flight. The pilot landed the balloon in a field, and he waited for the ground crew to arrive. While he was waiting, he applied heat to the balloon to keep it standing. Each time that he applied burner, he would look to ensure that it was not contacting the envelope. Just as the ground crew arrived, he glanced at the balloon and began another burn. As he was speaking with the crew, the flame made contact with the envelope. The crew evacuated the passengers from the balloon as portions of the burning fabric fell from it. Several panels were directly burned; melting fabric damaged others. The pilot noted no mechanical problems with the balloon.
Probable cause
the pilot's diverted attention that resulted in the inadequate handling of the burner during ground operations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04CA003
- Event ID
- 20031029X01825
- Case number
- LAX04CA003
- 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: 8b2fb20caf1201c929f8ee38ca0d0e34bd842f462a802c8631cd9324a9d4179b; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:21:14.748Z.