CEN12CA393 · National Ballooning Ltd 858
National Ballooning Ltd 858 · Accident: hard landing
From Karl Stefan Memorial Airport (KOFK) to Pierce, NE
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA393
- 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
National Ballooning Ltd 858
- Aircraft type
- National Ballooning 858
- 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
- N9005E
- Operator
- Wayne A Mohring · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Karl Stefan Memorial Airport (KOFK), Norfolk, NETo Pierce, NE
- 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 was participating with about eight other balloons in an early morning mass ascension. After about 45 minutes of flight, the pilot observed that the wind had increased and determined that a “high-wind landing” would be necessary. His two passengers had not experienced a balloon flight before, and the pilot instructed them that they should hold on tightly and face forward, with their feet pointed straight ahead and their knees bent to absorb the shock of the landing. He also advised them that the basket would likely tip over during the landing. The balloon initially touched down hard in a flat, harvested field, then bounced and touched down a second time. The pilot reported his ground speed was about 13 to 14 mph. During the second touchdown the basket tipped over and was dragged about 100 feet, coming to rest on its side in an adjacent cornfield. The pilot deflated the balloon envelope and the three occupants began to climb out of the basket. The 70-year old passenger was seriously injured during the landing. The balloon was not damaged. The pilot said that he thought the passenger’s injury occurred because she did not have her feet pointed straight ahead during the landing.
Probable cause
The balloon pilot’s encounter with increased wind during landing, which resulted in a hard landing and a passenger’s injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA393
- Event ID
- 20120626X70032
- Case number
- CEN12CA393
- 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: 58edf8dea1fc422089962c12344a95e7730bfb23972053f161a8223ef9039816; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:37:53.826Z.