CEN16LA352 · Cameron Z90
Cameron Z90 · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
From Mitchell, NE to Morrill, NE
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA352
- 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
Cameron Z90
- Aircraft type
- Cameron Z90
- 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
- N982ZS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mitchell, NETo Morrill, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 4 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
- Approach
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- 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 balloon was participating in a festival, and departed from a grass field with the private pilot and two passengers on board. The balloon climbed to 1,100 ft above ground level and drifted west. The pilot reported that, as the balloon approached a set of power lines, the wind diminished and the balloon became stationary. The pilot changed altitude several times in an attempt to find wind velocity and direction that would move the balloon away from the lines; however, as he again engaged the burners and attempted to climb, the burner system ran out of fuel. The balloon descended, and one of the metal carabiners that attached the basket to the envelope struck a power line, resulting in a spark. The pilot pulled the deflation valve and immediately descended the balloon to the ground. A postaccident examination of the balloon showed impact and thermal arcing damage to the carabiner. Two of the envelope panels exhibited thermal damage, and the envelope temperature sensor wire, which runs from the top of the envelope to the instruments in the basket, was burnt in half. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with the balloon.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper inflight fuel management, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and an inability to avoid contact with power lines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA352
- Event ID
- 20160906X35218
- Case number
- CEN16LA352
- 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. 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: badf6a362f3b3c0c17a729cf90bc5ea74b4beb62a117714449d6cb83ec2cf618; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:13:38.401Z.