CEN10CA017 · Cameron Z77
Cameron Z77 · Accident: hard landing
From Rio Rancho, NM to Albuquerque, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA017
- 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
Cameron Z77
- Aircraft type
- Cameron Z77
- 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
- N4502V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rio Rancho, 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
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- 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
After a morning balloon flight the pilot was making an approach to landing on a golf course. During a descent to treetop level the pilot reported the winds varied from 8 to 17 miles per hour. After descending below the tops of the trees the pilot reported a gust of 17 miles per hour with a “significant wind shift,” which moved the balloon laterally toward a line of trees. Just before touchdown the pilot said that she “pulled the top” to avoid hitting the trees and “we landed quickly dragging about 5 feet”. As the envelope deflated it snagged a tree causing minor damage to the balloon. The pilot sustained a fractured ankle and one passenger sustained minor injuries. The other occupant was not injured.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the balloon during the approach and landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA017
- Event ID
- 20091016X23155
- Case number
- CEN10CA017
- 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, 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: 5e314204719ce4b588c42cf3109d2747e5dcb227435bab1e0583d7ab199a6dfa; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:24:49.179Z.