CHI08CA281 · Firefly Balloons 8B-15
Firefly Balloons 8B-15 · Accident during landing
From Springfield, IL to Springfield, IL
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08CA281
- 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 Balloons 8B-15
- Aircraft type
- Firefly 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
- N2053D
- Operator
- Edward J. Dowling · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Springfield, ILTo Springfield, IL
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the ground winds were 1 to 2 miles per hour, and the winds between 500 and 1,500 feet above the ground varied from 5 to 8 miles per hour during the uneventful flight. He reported that he chose a backyard in which to land, and at an altitude of seven to nine feet above the ground they threw a line out to the chase crew to slow them down. The pilot reported that before reaching the ground, two more chase crewmembers grabbed the gondola to slow them down even more and to soften the landing. Upon touching down, one passenger lost her balance and fell into a 91-year-old passenger, knocking her to the bottom of the gondola. The 91-year-old passenger suffered two broken legs and a broken ankle. The pilot reported that prior to the departure all of the passengers were instructed to hold on tight, bend their knees, and stay inside the gondola during the landing.
Probable cause
The failure of the passenger to follow the pilot's instructions by not steadying herself during the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08CA281
- Event ID
- 20081003X41458
- Case number
- CHI08CA281
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-09-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4130fc1d59db6ef3a35b37fd35506dbf8536906fdde3d4bb00be531eb5f05adc; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:19:53.818Z.