CHI04CA191 · Aerostar RX-7
Aerostar RX-7 · Accident: uncontrolled altitude deviation en route
From Wausau, WI to Wausau, WI
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04CA191
- 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-7
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar RX-7
- 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
- N7144Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wausau, WITo Wausau, WI
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Uncontrolled altitude deviation
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, not successful
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 suffered a broken leg when the hot air balloon experienced a hard landing due to gusty winds. The balloon was not damaged. The pilot reported a normal ascent and smooth flight for the first 5 minutes. She stated that the balloon then encountered turbulence. Initially the balloon climbed at 800 feet per minute (fpm) on a north-northwesterly heading, before switching to a southeasterly heading about 1,800 feet agl. Shortly afterward the balloon began to descend at 800 fpm. When the balloon reached an altitude of 100 feet agl the pilot attempted a normal landing. She estimated the wind was about 3 miles per hour toward the east-southeast. During the landing attempt, the pilot reported that a wind gust lifted the balloon up and over some trees and across a road. She noted that the balloon subsequently landed normally in a "swampy" area. However, before she could alert the ground crew a wind gust lifted the balloon to about 250 feet agl. The balloon subsequently traveled across a road and dropped into a hay field. She reported that she broke her leg during the hard landing. The pilot stated that because the envelope was partially deflated at this point, she did not have time to use the airborne heater to soften the impact. The balloon was dragged by the wind until she could retrieve the vent line to fully deflate the envelope. The pilot stated that she had obtained a pre-flight weather briefing from Green Bay Automated Flight Service Station. She also reported that they had launched several PIBAL's (pilot balloon observation) to check upper level winds prior to launch.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to compensation for the turbulence and wind conditions. Contributing factors were the variable winds and the turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04CA191
- Event ID
- 20040818X01243
- Case number
- CHI04CA191
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-07-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3ee9b25d4a7fcfa9a988ea531f3111d47a66d3c1cfc1a5c84db5afa9396449fc; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:14:47.099Z.