NYC04LA017 · Aerostar RX-8
Aerostar RX-8 · Accident: hard landing
From Ithaca, NY (no airport) to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA017
- 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
Aerostar RX-8
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar RX-8
- 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
- N3597H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ithaca, NY (no airport)To No airport
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Descent, excessive
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The hot air balloon pilot reported that he checked the weather the night before, and again on the morning of the flight. At the takeoff site, the pilot released three PIBALS over a period 45 minutes during which time, the winds lessened to the point that the pilot felt he could safely make the flight. The pilot reported that he briefed the passengers to bend their knees at touchdown, and to face in the direction of landing, after which he took off. About 15 minutes after departure, the winds increased, and the pilot looked for a place to land. He aborted his first landing attempt, and then located a grass field. He vented the envelope about 10 feet above the ground, and the balloon struck hard, during which time, the injuries occurred. The basket tipped over and was dragged for over 300 feet prior to coming to rest. A check of terminal forecasts for a nearby airport revealed higher winds were not forecast to be present during the time of the accident flight. However, they were forecast to begin about 2 1/2 hours later. The pilot's total flight experience was 43 hours, all in hot air balloons, including 31 hours in make and model.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive descent rate during the execution of a high wind landing. A factor was the high winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA017
- Event ID
- 20031110X01875
- Case number
- NYC04LA017
- 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: a2e98292bde23aa7f6036cba34e687fce369c6e4b5e60900543e2b4e1bf02ae0; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:21:31.270Z.