CEN13WA492 · Aerostar International Inc. S-55A
Aerostar International Inc. S-55A · Accident while maneuvering
From St-Jean to Mont-St-Grégoire
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13WA492
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · 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
Aerostar International Inc. S-55A
- Aircraft type
- Aerostar S-55
- 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
- N25QL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St-JeanTo Mont-St-Grégoire
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 11, 2013, at 0730 eastern daylight time, an Aerostar International Inc. model S-55A, United States registration N25QL, serial number S55A1-1017, was not damaged when a member of the balloon ground-support team was fatally injured after falling to the ground from 100 feet near Mont-St-Grégoire, Québec, Canada. The pilot and passenger were not injured. The balloon was registered to and operated by the commercial pilot. Day visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the flight that departed near Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec, Canada, about 0650.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Government. Further information may be obtained from:
Transportation Safety Board of Canada Place du Centre 200 Promenade du Portage, 4th Floor Gatineau, Quebec K1A 1K8
Phone: 1 (800) 387-3557 Fax: 1 (819) 997-2239 E-mail: airops@tsb.gc.ca Webpage: http://www.tsb.gc.ca
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information released by or obtained from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13WA492
- Event ID
- 20130815X14302
- Case number
- CEN13WA492
- 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: 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: ed1b96ee4a3b02c2353925b86349c260204be83318c8ce0e388026c9ad9388af; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:02:26.160Z.