DEN08LA005 · Sproul 72K-TET
Sproul 72K-TET · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Albuquerque, NM (no airport) to Rio Rancho, NM (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08LA005
- 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
Sproul 72K-TET
- Aircraft type
- Sproul 72
- 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
- N72KX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albuquerque, NM (no airport)To Rio Rancho, NM (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 · descent
- 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
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
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 the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. The pilot received a preflight FAA weather briefing in which the wind was forecasted to be between 3 mph and 5 mph. Once airborne, the pilot realized the winds were "quite variable" at different altitudes. The balloon was at 2,000 feet agl and traveling about 8 mph. By observing other balloons and talking to other pilots via radio, he discovered the winds closer to the ground were "quite fast and going in the opposite direction." One pilot who had landed had reported his balloon was going about 25 mph at 500 feet agl, then it slowed to about 8 mph when it got close to the ground. The accident pilot descended and encountered 25 mph winds. As he got closer to the ground, the balloon slowed "but only to about 15 to 16 mph." He attempted to land on the north side of a new housing development, but the wind carried the balloon to the south side of the development. There were brick retaining walls separating the different plots of land awaiting new house construction. The basket struck a street curb, scraped the top of a brick wall perpendicular to the balloon's flight path, and then impacted a second wall. The basket dragged along the wall, and then stopped, and the envelope draped over the other side of the wall. Upon impact with the second wall, a passenger was thrown against the fuel tank and sustained serious injuries. The pilot said the winds in other parts of the valley only a few miles away "were much less." In post-accident discussions with other pilots who had been involved in accidents and incidents that morning, the consensus was the winds had developed "faster than expected." Other pilots reported being pushed into the ground at low altitudes. They referred to these phenomena as a "false heavy."
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate inflight planning/judgment, and his selection of unsuitable terrain on which to make a landing. Contributing factors in this accident were the unfavorable wind, and the pilot misjudging his airspeed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08LA005
- Event ID
- 20071029X01674
- Case number
- DEN08LA005
- 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: 32c360666cc53273ecff2017c6893d996ea90c908285c79fe93cdc26abfc9118; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:43:03.978Z.