CEN13IA349 · Ultramagic SA T210
Fair Winds Ultramagic SA T210 · Incident: hard landing
From Gunbarrel, CO to Boulder, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13IA349
- 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
- Incident
- 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 SA T210
- Aircraft type
- Ultramagic T210
- 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
- N201FW
- Operator
- Fair Winds
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gunbarrel, COTo Boulder, CO
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
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 reported that he checked the weather forecast before takeoff and received a briefing from flight service. He and the other balloon pilots flying that day compared the weather information and determined that the weather was good enough to fly. About 45 minutes into the flight, at 3,000 feet above ground level, the pilot noticed that the other balloons flying nearby were "screaming up and down" and that, within 5 minutes, the wind, which had been carrying them easterly at 6 to 8 knots, shifted to the southwest at 30 knots or more. The balloon was getting bounced around, and the wind was not subsiding, so the pilot decided to immediately land the balloon. The pilot briefed the passengers for a high-wind landing and landed the balloon in a conservation area. The basket tipped over and was dragged for about 50 to 60 yards until a wind gust lifted the balloon about 5 feet above the ground. The pilot pulled in the top vent, which put the balloon back on the ground, and it finally stopped moving.
A review of meteorological data available at the time of the preflight briefing indicated, in part, that wind from the west existed at 10 knots or less before takeoff. The National Weather Service (NWS) terminal area forecast expected easterly wind shifting to the northwest during the anticipated flight at 13 knots with wind from the north gusting to 23 knots after 1000 mountain daylight time. The NWS area forecast did not expect any high winds across Colorado. The NWS Aviation Forecast Center had no advisories current for low-level turbulence or high winds over Colorado surrounding the anticipated flight. However, shortly after takeoff a sudden increase in windspeed occurred across the region with wind gusts from 20 to 38 knots. The NWS misjudged the timing and underestimated the magnitude of the frontal boundary moving across the region. It is likely that, if the pilot had known about the gusting wind at the time of takeoff, he may not have chosen to fly that day.
Probable cause
The balloon's encounter with unforecast strong gusting wind, which resulted in a high-wind landing. Contributing to the accident was the National Weather Service's misjudgment of the timing and underestimation of the magnitude of the frontal boundary moving across the region.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13IA349
- Event ID
- 20130613X82747
- Case number
- CEN13IA349
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: b8d951ccbbf17d7d70890cb10b8e1d78d9cf5275e94fbd4dffefb6f17a51858a; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:52:22.488Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative and the aircraft's make and model, which establish these values: aircraft category. The aircraft is an Ultramagic T-210 hot-air balloon, and the narrative describes "the balloon's encounter" with gusting wind; the NTSB MDB codes it AIR (Airplane).