ERA12CA328 · Ultramagic N425
Ultramagic N425 · Accident: cabin safety event during landing
From Orlando, FL to Clermont, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA328
- 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
Ultramagic N425
- Aircraft type
- Ultramagic N425
- 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
- N990BR
- Operator
- Damien Mahony
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando, FLTo Clermont, FL
- 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
- Cabin safety event
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At the completion of a balloon flight, the balloon touched down while moving at 4 mph and bounced. An adult passenger did not maintain her grip on the hand-holds and fell into another passenger, breaking that passenger’s wrist. According to the operator, the multi-passenger, partition-basket balloon was used for sightseeing flights. The passengers were given a briefing card and briefed at the operator's facility before being bused to the launch site, where a more detailed briefing was provided by the balloon’s pilot. The items briefed included the location of hand-holds and the proper stance at touchdown.
Probable cause
The balloon passenger's failure to maintain her grip during landing, which resulted in a fall and injury to another passenger.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA328
- Event ID
- 20120510X73152
- Case number
- ERA12CA328
- 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: 2d76083d032a7e0653a4d3ce02e74653885946db1a25ae055912feca04ded7ab; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:02:55.352Z.