IAD04CA045 · Cameron Balloons Z-90
Cameron Balloons Z-90 · Accident: hard landing
From York, PA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD04CA045
- 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
Cameron Balloons Z-90
- Aircraft type
- Cameron Z-90
- 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
- N1032B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From York, PATo 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 · 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
- None
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 pilot briefed both passengers for the commercial balloon flight prior to takeoff, and specifically briefed them on landing procedures, which included bending their knees, facing the direction of travel, holding on, and remaining standing. About the time the balloon was launched, the wind speed was 8 miles per hour (mph). About 30 minutes into the flight, the winds had increased to 16 mph. The pilot advised his passengers and the ground crew that they would be landing as soon as possible. The pilot lowered the drop line to the ground crew and they subsequently slowed the balloon from 12 mph to 8 mph. He then repeated the landing instructions to the passengers, and indicated that they should brace themselves for a very hard landing. The pilot pulled the vent line to release some of the heat from the envelope, and ensure the balloon did not bounce. The basket "hit the ground" and tipped over. One of the passengers incurred a back injury during the landing. The pilot did not claim that the passenger failed to follow his landing instructions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to arrest an excessive descent rate prior to ground contact, which resulted in a hard landing. A factor was the relatively high winds (for balloon flight.)
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD04CA045
- Event ID
- 20040929X01518
- Case number
- IAD04CA045
- 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: 2b2dff833d9c1f203b82d71b017c85d39f5d1514a712cb95a9dadbe89356d02b; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:13:38.053Z.