ERA17LA243 · Balloon Works FIREFLY 8B 15 UNDESIGNAT
Balloon Works FIREFLY 8B 15 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: ground handling event while standing
From Murfreesboro, TN to Murfreesboro, TN
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA243
- 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
Balloon Works FIREFLY 8B 15 UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Balloon Works FIREFLY 8
- 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
- N3282P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Murfreesboro, TNTo Murfreesboro, TN
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2017)
- 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
- Ground handling event
- 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
According to the commercial pilot, after a successful sightseeing balloon flight, all the passengers exited the gondola and were helping the pilot secure the balloon. As they were holding on to the maneuvering handles, the balloon began to ascend; the pilot directed the passengers to "let go" of the gondola, and all except one released the maneuvering handles. The passenger who did not let go was carried about 30 ft into the air before he let go and fell to the ground; he sustained serious injuries. The pilot regained control of the balloon and landed.
Probable cause
The passenger's failure to let go of the balloon's gondola 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 ERA17LA243
- Event ID
- 20170715X94908
- Case number
- ERA17LA243
- 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 2017-07-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f7286f09e1cd2a0740beaa18780e6cc109e9dc7dfb1f6ac54181ebdb02d932ae; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:32:44.409Z.