ERA16LA210 · Cameron A-225 AX-11
Cameron A-225 AX-11 · Accident: loss of control on ground while standing
From Letchworth, NY to Nunda, NY
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA210
- 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
- 1
- 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 A-225 AX-11
- Aircraft type
- Cameron A-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
- N69515
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Letchworth, NYTo Nunda, NY
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2016)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At the end of a 45-minute sightseeing flight, the commercial pilot landed the balloon in a field, and the 10 passengers got out of the basket. The pilot remained in the basket and left the balloon envelope inflated while the ground crewmembers began to walk the balloon over to the cart for deflation and disassembly. Although the balloon was being weighed down and stabilized by four ground crewmembers, it started to ascend quickly. Two additional passengers joined in and attempted to hold down the basket, but it kept ascending. Three of the four ground crewmembers let go of the basket as they had been taught to do; however, one ground crewmember did not let go and was carried aloft. As the balloon rose, the pilot, who had bent down to unclasp the vent lines from the basket, looked up and became aware that the balloon was ascending and moving toward nearby trees and a powerline. He operated the burner to increase his rate of ascent so that he could climb over the obstacles. When the balloon was about 150 to 200 ft above the ground, the pilot became aware that the ground crewmember was hanging from the rope handles on the bottom of the basket. He began to vent the balloon to land, but the crewmember lost his grip and fell about 100 ft, resulting in a fatal injury. The balloon landed about 1/2 mile from the original landing site and 800 ft from the location where the crewmember fell.
Probable cause
The ground crewmember's failure to let go of the balloon's basket when the balloon began to ascend. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to maintain control of the balloon after landing, which resulted in an inadvertent takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA210
- Event ID
- 20160612X04327
- Case number
- ERA16LA210
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2016-06-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ca16628f2c99e37362b49715c5ff9cde5acd0bc1aaa8c57a23e50cdbeb6e3fcf; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:01:40.347Z.