CEN10CA010 · Aerostar International RX-7
Aerostar International RX-7 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Albuquerque, NM to Albuquerque, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA010
- 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 RX-7
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar RX-7
- 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
- N9126K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albuquerque, NMTo Albuquerque, NM
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a morning balloon competition flight the pilot was attempting to maneuver the balloon in order to drop a marker on a target. When approaching the target area the pilot said she was flying approximately 15 feet above ground level when she “burned to ascend” over a steel frame sponsor’s tent on the edge of the competition target area. The balloon cleared the rear of the tent, but the basket struck the front edge. A review of a video recording of the event shows that the impact abruptly tilted the basket more than 45 degrees. The passenger was ejected and fell approximately 30 feet to the ground. Suddenly minus the weight of the missing passenger the balloon then ascended rapidly and the pilot attempted to correct by venting. The rapid climb and the venting at the top of the balloon envelope caused the mouth of the balloon to close and the balloon then began descending rapidly. The pilot was unable to correct the descent with a burn because the closed mouth was being burned by the flames from the burner. The balloon landed hard and sustained minor damage. The passenger and pilot both sustained serious injuries.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate clearance from a known obstacle and the pilot’s failure to maintain control of the balloon during the sudden climb following the ejection of the passenger.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA010
- Event ID
- 20091008X25301
- Case number
- CEN10CA010
- 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: investigation status. 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: f2fd9c4f63b46d98867a07f3904ddc1717d415e207cfd2a4b5aa9dfa09ebb326; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:23:43.024Z.