WPR11LA017 · Lindstrand Balloons 90A
Lindstrand Balloons 90A · Accident: midair collision en route
From Cottonwood Airport (P52) to Cottonwood Airport (P52)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA017
- 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
Lindstrand Balloons 90A Narrative disagrees
- Aircraft type
- Lindstrand 90
- 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
- N807PW
- Operator
- Eric Wadleigh
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cottonwood Airport (P52), Cottonwood, AZTo Cottonwood Airport (P52), Cottonwood, AZ
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
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 of a hot air balloon reported that he was on a local area flight during an airport appreciation day at the departure airport. During the flight, he saw a powered paraglider maneuver close to the envelope of his hot air balloon. The paraglider subsequently collided with the envelope of the hot air balloon. The pilot of the unregistered paraglider reported that he was focused on taking photographs of another hot air balloon at the time and was not aware that he had maneuvered so close to the accident hot air balloon. The paraglider pilot attempted an evasive maneuver to avoid the hot air balloon; however, the paraglider flew into the side of the envelope, penetrating it. As the balloon and paraglider descended, they remained attached until ground impact.
Probable cause
The paraglider pilot's failure to see and avoid the hot air balloon, which resulted in a midair collision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA017
- Event ID
- 20101016X21247
- Case number
- WPR11LA017
- 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: 391334c5c4da37742e892d0f0010570e2a13fc06d631fd2bcd1fc2987e95ee3a; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:29:07.024Z.