WPR10LA300 · Arbc Inc DBA Lindstrand 120A
His Sky Ministries Arbc Inc DBA Lindstrand 120A · Accident
From Grants Pass, OR to Grants Pass, OR
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA300
- 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
Arbc Inc DBA Lindstrand 120A
- Aircraft type
- Lindstrand 120
- 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
- N501LB
- Operator
- His Sky Ministries
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grants Pass, ORTo Grants Pass, OR
- 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
- Other
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the post-landing, pre-deflation portion of a hot air balloon flight, the basket of the balloon began to lift off the ground when one of the individuals holding it released their grip on the top rim of the basket. At that point, the remaining three individuals holding the basket released their grip on the top rim of the basket and the balloon began to ascend. As the basket lifted higher into the air, one of the individuals who had released their grip on the basket top rim grabbed onto the rope handles near the base of the basket and was therefore lifted about 20 feet into the air. As soon as the pilot realized that someone was hanging from the bottom of the basket, he began venting air from the top of the balloon in order to get the basket back on the ground. But the individual hanging from the rope handles lost his grip and fell to grassy terrain below. The injured person had extensive experience acting as a balloon ground crew member and as a passenger in a balloon. He had no memory of the event, and it could not be determined why he grabbed onto the rope handles after releasing his grip from the basket rim.
Probable cause
The balloon ground crew member's decision to not release his hold on the basket of an ascending hot air balloon basket as it lifted off of the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA300
- Event ID
- 20100620X92126
- Case number
- WPR10LA300
- 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: 3df871050aabb1c99fd9a60e345debb55eb3a413078c5a3d5a8efb66fe1c1732; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:28:07.141Z.