LAX07CA071 · Balloon Works Firefly 9B-15
Balloon Works Firefly 9B-15 · Accident: hard landing
From Peoria, AZ to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07CA071
- 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
Balloon Works Firefly 9B-15
- Aircraft type
- Balloon Works FIREFLY 9
- 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
- N9087Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Peoria, AZTo 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 › Proper descent rate, not possible
- Weather condition › Downdraft
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A passenger was injured during a hard landing. The balloon pilot stated that he had selected a landing area on the west side of a highway, notified his ground crew of the location, and briefed the four passengers for landing. He was at an altitude of 200 feet agl with a descent rate of 200 fpm when the balloon encountered a downdraft. The pilot stated that he lit both burners in an attempt to arrest the rate of descent, notified the passengers to be prepared for a rough landing, and began to vent hot air from the balloon envelope to prevent a bounced landing. Upon contact with the ground, the basket tipped over and one of the passengers was tossed out. The balloon was now lighter without the passenger, rose back into the air, and drifted beyond intended landing zone. The pilot continued to the next closest suitable landing area and successfully landed the balloon. The ground crew located the passenger that had been tossed out of the basket. The passenger, who had sustained serious injuries, received medical attention and was transported to the hospital. The pilot reported that the local winds in the landing area were 180 degrees at 18 knots, and that there had been no mechanical failures or malfunctions during the flight. The METAR at the closest airport, approximately 20 miles southeast of the accident location, recorded the wind as calm for the local time of 0853.
Probable cause
The balloon’s inadvertent encounter with a downdraft, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07CA071
- Event ID
- 20070205X00135
- Case number
- LAX07CA071
- 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: 2178f3951eae457ba18ca68d8cd5e48ccab062a5705222f44118f00487ef10d5; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:51:39.356Z.