ERA14LA290 · Cameron Balloons US Z-225
The United States Hot Air Balloon Team Cameron Balloons US Z-225 · Accident during landing
From Pottstown Municipal Airport (N47) to Spring City, PA
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA290
- 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
- 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
Cameron Balloons US Z-225
- Aircraft type
- Cameron Z-225
- 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
- N65625
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pottstown Municipal Airport (N47), Pottstown, PATo Spring City, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2011)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Miscellaneous
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a local balloon flight with 10 passengers on board. A ground crewmember reported that he talked with the pilot before takeoff, and he indicated that the pilot did not appear to be unhealthy and that he did not mention feeling ill or that he was having any health-related issues. The passengers reported that, after takeoff, the flight proceeded uneventfully, with the pilot talking to them during the entire flight. The pilot chose to perform a landing in a field and informed the passengers to brace for landing; several of the passengers noted that the wind speed was increasing. Several of the passengers also noted that the descent was steep and that the landing was "hard" or "really hard." The pilot then appeared to lose his balance, and he fell out of the basket and sustained fatal injuries.
Although the pilot had several medical conditions and used several medications that could have affected his balance or reaction time and, thus, could have contributed to his fall from the basket, witnesses reported that the pilot appeared healthy and behaved normally before and during the flight. Further, even a fully alert, athletic person could have fallen in the manner described by the passengers. Based on the available evidence, it could not be determined if impairment from any of his medical conditions or the medications he was using to treat them caused the pilot to fall from the basket.
Probable cause
The pilot's fall from the balloon’s basket during touchdown in a field for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence, which resulted in his fatal injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA290
- Event ID
- 20140615X80021
- Case number
- ERA14LA290
- 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: e70f58c81eba6cc0ad766b8c13ca0649a50a3e104455001b99b68a358744ea17; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:19:45.647Z.