DEN04CA072 · Lindstrand Balloons 180A
Lindstrand Balloons 180A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during landing
From Ridgeway, CO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04CA072
- 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 180A
- Aircraft type
- Lindstrand 180
- 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
- N60181
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ridgeway, COTo 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
- 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
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Weather condition › Gusts
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 reported that while landing the wind changed directions taking his balloon up a slight draw between houses. The pilot said he elected to land on a hillside and wait for his crew. The pilot said they had been there for about a minute when a sudden gust of wind came up the draw and pushed the balloon in the air. The pilot said the balloon headed east toward a house at a rapid rate. He said the basket struck a boat, a ladder rack on a truck, and the edge of the roof of the house. The balloon then returned to the ground and was drug up a hill to its crest. At the crest of the hill the balloon again became airborne. The balloon again came down, this time on a road. The pilot said he ripped out the top to deflate the balloon. The balloon then bounced down the hillside before dragging the basket on its side for a short distance. The pilot said the balloon then came to rest and deflated. The pilot said the seriously injured passenger, on getting down in the basket, sat down hard. The pilot said the bottom of the basket sustained minor damage. The balloon envelope experienced some ripped panels. At 0752, the reported wind conditions at Montrose, Colorado, 25 miles north of the accident site were 210 degrees at 17 knots gusting to 20 knots.
Probable cause
the sudden wind gusts and the pilot's failure to maintain control of the balloon resulting in the balloon's basket impacting two vehicles and a house, and subsequently impacting the terrain. Factors relating to the accident were the two vehicles, the house, and the pilot's delay in taking remedial action to stop the balloon.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04CA072
- Event ID
- 20040616X00800
- Case number
- DEN04CA072
- 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: 5e3f381345f97db6bbf40cc1aace21a7a6bd531b7d7f026695e5c6d59f9dd68f; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:17:19.207Z.