DEN08LA004 · Aerostar S-66A
Aerostar S-66A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Albuquerque, NM (no airport) to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08LA004
- 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
- 1 · 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 S-66A
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar S-66
- 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
- N7179Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albuquerque, NM (no airport)To No airport
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, transmission
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Ground personnel › Proper assistance, improper
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The hot air free balloon was participating in a balloon fiesta. Wind velocity had increased, and several balloons were seen to go by at high speed and low altitude. The pilot stayed low to keep right of the congested areas, but two of his passengers said they were flying too low. The pilot became distracted when he saw another balloon hit a house. The next thing he realized was that the wind had forced the balloon into power lines (the pilot told state troopers that he saw the power lines and activated the burners in an attempt to fly over them, but he told the FAA that he was on a landing approach and was in visual contact with the power line when he encountered a downdraft and was unable to clear the power lines). The balloon's basket struck the top static line of a 3-phase high voltage transmission line. The wind began to collapse the envelope and the pilot activated the burners in an attempt to maintain inflation and break loose from the power line. The basket slid down the wire and the wire became entangled in the basket's skid plate. The pilot threw a drop line to his chase crew in hopes they could pull him free. This attempt failed. The chase crew then attached the drop line to a pickup truck and tried to tow the balloon free. This attempt also failed. The braided static wire sawed through the wicker basket. The balloon finally came loose from the power line and started to rise. The drop line broke and the balloon "shot up in the air like a rocket." A propane tank fell from the basket, and then the passenger fell out. Estimates of the balloon's altitude varied from 70 to 200 feet. The pilot felt one corner of the basket drop and saw the hole. He looked up through the balloon's throat and could see blue sky because the dilation vent had become unseated. The balloon drifted east, and then descended. The pilot said the balloon came down faster than terminal descent speed and landed hard.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate visual lookout and clearance resulting in an in-flight collision with power lines, and the ground crew's improper assistance. Contributing to this accident were the high wind, the pilot's diverted attention, low altitude, transmission wire, and the subsequent partial failure of the basket and envelope.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08LA004
- Event ID
- 20071029X01673
- Case number
- DEN08LA004
- 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. 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: 284c11fc563745a664261b2519f05892b82a74db33c40955e5045b53cd8b51fa; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:12:22.979Z.