CEN15LA314 · Arbc Inc 69X
Arbc Inc 69X · Accident: hard landing
From Kilgore, TX to Longview, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA314
- 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
Arbc Inc 69X
- Aircraft type
- Arbc 69
- 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
- N76627
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kilgore, TXTo Longview, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2012)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, as the balloon descended, the wind speed increased. He aborted the first landing to avoid power lines and chose to land in an adjacent field. During the landing, the balloon encountered a downdraft after the pilot turned off the burners and pulled the parachute top to release hot air. The balloon impacted the ground hard, dragged the basket a short distance, and then stopped. The balloon was not damaged, but the pilot's left hip and ankle were broken during the hard landing. An examination of the balloon and its systems revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The balloon’s hard landing due to a high surface wind and downdraft, which resulted in the pilot sustaining a serious leg injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA314
- Event ID
- 20150723X50351
- Case number
- CEN15LA314
- 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: 2e5c067b309fdb562f492e382d6e242f51b9f4d76588a2df588e13d44ef73d0b; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:34:09.278Z.