WPR10CA058 · Cameron Balloons US A-250
Napa Valley Balloons Cameron Balloons US A-250 · Accident: hard landing
From Yountville, CA to Napa, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA058
- 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 Balloons US A-250
- Aircraft type
- Cameron A-250
- 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
- N4062M
- Operator
- Napa Valley Balloons
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yountville, CATo Napa, CA
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the balloon reported that after three unsuccessful landing attempts during the sightseeing flight, he located a grassy 2-3 acre field and positioned the balloon for landing. He stated that the approach was from the northwest at 500-feet and the balloon was traveling about 6 knots. The pilot anticipated winds near the surface to be from the east; however, after descending to 250-feet the balloon continued in a southerly direction, near trees. The pilot executed a controlled descent over a tree and landed firmly. The basket bounced once and came to rest upright with the balloon's envelope against a tree. After the landing, one of the passengers complained of ankle pain and was transported to a hospital. A medical evaluation revealed that the passenger's ankle was fractured. The pilot reported that a passenger landing briefing was completed prior to landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's encounter with variable winds which resulted in a hard landing and passenger injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA058
- Event ID
- 20091120X15754
- Case number
- WPR10CA058
- 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, 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: 2470bd487f47099b196521124c4dbfcccdc7bae296241bf7d2bdcb3488fe48c3; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:30:22.180Z.