LAX05LA143 · Firefly Balloon, Inc. Firefly 11
Firefly Balloon, Inc. Firefly 11 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Calistoga, CA to Saint Helena, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA143
- 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
Firefly Balloon, Inc. Firefly 11
- Aircraft type
- Firefly Balloon FIREFLY 11
- 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
- N15001
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Calistoga, CATo Saint Helena, CA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Weather condition › High wind
- Weather condition › Windshear
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The balloon touched down hard at the conclusion of a sightseeing flight seriously injuring one of the eight fare-paying passengers. The pilot indicated that upon entering a wider area of the Napa Valley the winds aloft should have slowed, but they did not. Therefore, he decided to land as soon as possible, having the belief that the wind speed might increase if he continued the flight. During the descent to an open field, the balloon drifted over a row of estimated 30- to 40-foot-tall trees, and the wind speed suddenly increased to between 10 and 12 miles per hour. The pilot advised the passengers to prepare for a possible hard touchdown, and during the final seconds of the flight, he used both burners at maximum power to slow the descent rate. However, a windshear was encountered, and the balloon abruptly descended.
Probable cause
The pilot's encounter with wind shear during landing, which resulted in a hard touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA143
- Event ID
- 20050504X00554
- Case number
- LAX05LA143
- 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: 8af8d25bed316ca7f00f64f36c6ecaef63dbbaff6a4c0426b5f6d4c7d824a89a; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:08:45.642Z.