GAA15LA225 · Ultramagic N250
Hot Air Expeditions Ultramagic N250 · Accident: loss of control on ground while standing
From Phoenix, AZ to Phoenix, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15LA225
- 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
Ultramagic N250
- Aircraft type
- Ultramagic N250
- 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
- N57EX
- Operator
- Hot Air Expeditions
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Phoenix, AZTo Phoenix, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Standing
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during the balloon deflation process after landing and when the balloon was about 90 percent deflated, a wind gust caught the fabric that still had hot air trapped in it. The basket subsequently tipped forward, and one passenger slid out of the basket and sustained a serious injury. The pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the balloon that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that the passengers remained secure in the basket during deflation after landing, which resulted in a passenger falling out of the basket and sustaining a serious injury when a wind gust caught the envelope and tipped the basket on its side.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15LA225
- Event ID
- 20150817X70921
- Case number
- GAA15LA225
- 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: 0bc039cc74bab0145c878005eb0de0db56a682276559609d7c9bb0ba361bd989; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:40:51.088Z.