ATL04LA198 · Thunder & Colt Ltd 210A
Thunder & Colt Ltd 210A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Cornelius, NC to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04LA198
- 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
Thunder & Colt Ltd 210A
- Aircraft type
- Thunder Colt 210
- 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
- N91101
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cornelius, NCTo 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- 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
According to the pilot, he had obtained a weather briefing and had departed from a field. The balloon had drifted east at about two miles per hour. He stated that after about 30 minutes the wind began increasing to a speed of around 15 to 18 miles per hour, and he began looking for a place to land. He stated he bypassed several fields before he found a large open construction site. He started a descent towards the field and instructed his passengers to get down and brace for a hard landing. He said that just at touchdown the balloon caught a gust of wind and hit a small mound of dirt causing the basket to overturn and the pilot and passengers to tumble out. The basket was dragged several feet before it came to a complete stop. The balloon and basket were not damaged.
Probable cause
Gusty weather conditions which resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain during touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04LA198
- Event ID
- 20041018X01643
- Case number
- ATL04LA198
- 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 2004-07-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: dc0e2e351b250ff6f733c823a224067cdfc524492bb685d3f21062cb0a0c90f6; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:15:26.230Z.