CHI06LA208 · Aerostar International, Inc. RX 8
Aerostar International, Inc. RX 8 · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From Dodge Center, MN to Clairmont, MN
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06LA208
- 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 International, Inc. RX 8
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar RX-8
- 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
- N3639Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dodge Center, MNTo Clairmont, MN
- 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 collision with object
- 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
- Passenger › Procedures/directives, not followed
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A passenger sustained a broken ankle upon landing during a balloon flight. The balloon struck a barbed wire fence and then impacted a road bank. The passenger stated that during the landing, the chase crew yelled out there was a fence. The pilot stated that the passenger was observed not following landing instructions by not facing the direction of travel but her left side was facing the direction of travel. She stated that they had been taught during the class to face the direction of travel with knees flexed for landing. She stated that there was not enough room in the basket with her husband standing behind her and the pilot standing to her left. She was holding onto a rope handle in the balloon and was trying to move a water bottle on the floor of the basket with her left foot at the time of the landing.
Probable cause
The procedure not followed by the passenger during landing and the inadequate supervision of the passenger by the pilot during landing. A contributing factors were the barbed wire fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06LA208
- Event ID
- 20060731X01057
- Case number
- CHI06LA208
- 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, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-07-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9fdc6c809d2b6255fb16c7bd6ea318a6043a9b52583ce4d090b289957bcd9b8e; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:55:29.661Z.