CEN15LA434 · Lindstrand LBL69A
Lindstrand LBL69A · Accident: hard landing
From Albuquerque, NM to Albuquerque, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA434
- 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
Lindstrand LBL69A
- Aircraft type
- Lindstrand LBL69
- 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
- N266LB
- Operator
- Wooge G Scott · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albuquerque, NMTo Albuquerque, NM
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2003)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial balloon pilot reported that the purpose of the flight was to obtain currency in landings and to practice steep approaches. The pilot and pilot-rated passenger obtained a weather briefing from flight service and also checked the weather at the launch site; the weather conditions were good for the flight. They took off in the balloon and began tracking to the south. The pilot immediately began practicing approaches and landings. She performed three approaches and full-stop landings on road intersections without any problems. She began the fourth approach to a road about 1,000 ft above ground level. The pilot reported that she misjudged the approach and that, upon landing, the balloon hit the road's edge hard. The pilot was thrown forward and hit the basket bolster with her chest. The balloon bounced and then touched down on the opposite side of the road. The basket then tipped over and was dragged about 10 ft before it stopped. The pilot sustained broken ribs during the accident.
The pilot reported that the accident balloon was a standard-sized balloon, which was different from the racing balloon that she usually flew, and that the racing balloons climb and descend differently. It is likely that the pilot's lack of recent experience flying the standard-shaped balloon contributed to her failure to maintain a proper descent rate during the approach.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain a proper descent rate on approach, which resulted in a hard landing and the pilot sustaining a serious injury. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s lack of recent experience flying a standard-shaped balloon.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA434
- Event ID
- 20151001X22006
- Case number
- CEN15LA434
- 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: 20caba93734d4f2fd0028846bf43cfcee7f36b2b6ee4bf5849bb48e0a1eb414d; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:50:40.971Z.