ERA11LA469 · Lindstrand Balloons 180A
Lindstrand Balloons 180A · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) before flight
From Lewiston, ME to Lewiston, ME
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA469
- 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 180A
- Aircraft type
- Lindstrand 180
- 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
- N75213
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lewiston, METo Lewiston, ME
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Fire/smoke (non-impact)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness, who boarded the balloon for a sightseeing flight, reported that the pilot bent over and contacted a gas line with his arm. The line connection separated at the inflation tank, and gas sprayed upward and ignited. The pilot received second-degree burns on his hands and arms. Three passengers and one ground crewmember received minor injuries. A postaccident examination revealed that a rubber o-ring on the inflation tank valve was partially exposed and out of its normal position. The examination revealed that there was no approval documentation for the installation of the inflation tank.
Probable cause
The separation of the inflation tank gas line due to an improperly positioned valve o-ring. Contributing to the accident was the use of an unapproved inflation tank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA469
- Event ID
- 20110823X72145
- Case number
- ERA11LA469
- 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, 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: 692707a31fe74c70342b4c2edc9a20e15915dda3852aa55ea2a30daee8254c90; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:39:29.938Z.