CEN17LA223 · Head Balloons Inc AX7 77B
Head Balloons Inc AX7 77B · Accident: loss of control on ground while standing
From Chatsworth, IL to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA223
- 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
Head Balloons Inc AX7 77B
- Aircraft type
- Head AX7
- 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
- N30721
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chatsworth, ILTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
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 pilot reported that, while inflating the balloon with hot air in light wind, he heard people yelling and stopped burning; he turned and saw another balloon that was airborne and swinging around. The accident balloon then became airborne and started swinging around very rapidly. He looked down and realized that spectators on the ground were directly below his balloon, and he immediately started burning to add heat so that the balloon would rise and not descend on spectators. Due to concern for spectator safety, the pilot felt his only recourse was to attempt to climb the balloon to avoid injuring the spectators on the ground. However, the accident balloon did not rise and instead struck the ground twice, and the pilot was ejected from the basket. Due to the decreased weight after the pilot was ejected, the balloon rose and flew off with two passengers still in the basket and subsequently landed about 2 blocks away. The passengers jumped out, causing the balloon to rise again. The balloon descended a final time about 1/4 mile away in a field.
A review of weather reports from a nearby airport revealed that the wind was 5 knots. A spectator on the ground provided videos of the balloons before and during the accident sequence. The spectator reported and the videos showed that the wind was calm, followed by gusts. Based on the available evidence, it is likely the accident resulted from unexpected wind gusts that led the balloon to prematurely become airborne.
Probable cause
The balloon’s encounter with unexpected wind gusts during inflation, which resulted in the balloon becoming prematurely airborne and subsequently the pilot being ejected from the basket and one passenger receiving serious injuries while attempting to egress from the pilotless balloon.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA223
- Event ID
- 20170612X60506
- Case number
- CEN17LA223
- 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: 662099939d4bd1cc18eca20c44032ed3f17b44ec9845fd31cfffd92b4c502a28; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:24:12.804Z.