ERA16LA284 · Balloon Works FIREFLY8
Araho Balloon Balloon Works FIREFLY8 · Accident: hard landing
From Pittsfield, NH to Northwood, NH
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA284
- 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
- 0
- 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
Balloon Works FIREFLY8
- Aircraft type
- Balloon Works FIREFLY8
- 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
- N317W
- Operator
- Araho Balloon
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pittsfield, NHTo Northwood, NH
- Aircraft age
- About 22 years (built 1994)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was providing sightseeing rides in a balloon as part of an annual event, which included 17 balloons. He stated that, during a weather briefing for the event, the wind was reported to be between 8 and 10 knots and forecast to reduce to less than 5 knots before increasing again. The pilot added that, after he inflated the balloon envelope, "it was not rocking," which meant to him that the weather "was not excessively windy." He boarded five passengers and departed. The balloon uneventfully climbed to between about 1,200 and 1,500 ft. The pilot then chose a 5-acre field for landing about 6 miles south of the departure point. The balloon landed hard, and the basket momentarily tipped over before righting itself; it then dragged along the ground before coming to a stop at the edge of the field. During the landing, one passenger fell inside the basket and was seriously injured.
Before the launch, several pibals (pilot balloons) were released to assess the wind conditions, which were determined to be changeable. Additionally, thunderstorms were moving through an area about 15 miles north of the balloons' planned departure point. Based on that information, the other 16 balloon pilots chose not to launch. The recorded weather at an airport located about 12 miles west of the accident site, about the time of the accident, included wind from 340° at 15 knots.
Probable cause
The balloon pilot’s inadequate weather planning and improper decision to depart in reported increasing variable winds with nearby thunderstorms, which resulted in a subsequent hard landing and a serious passenger injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA284
- Event ID
- 20160808X94140
- Case number
- ERA16LA284
- 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: 73d360123a33ab5d6a4188c7bef4401a1c23d5175fd704e609cf50270c0db853; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:08:01.227Z.