CEN18LA245 · Kubicek BB30 Z
Kubicek BB30 Z · Accident: loss of control on ground while standing
From Ashland, OH to Ashland, OH
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA245
- 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
- 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
Kubicek BB30 Z
- Aircraft type
- Kubicek BB30
- 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
- N717FN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ashland, OHTo Ashland, OH
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2015)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a sponsor flight for a local balloon rally with a student pilot and two passengers onboard. After a 15-minute flight, the pilot landed the balloon in a field. After landing, the student exited the basket to control the balloon's crown line in preparation for deflating the envelope, and the two passengers remained crouched down in the balloon basket. As the pilot started to deflate the envelope, the wind increased, which concaved the envelope and subsequently pulled the balloon forward, tipping the basket over. As the basket tipped over, the pilot fell forward and hit his head on the dual burner assembly. The pilot became unconscious about 20 to 30 seconds later, and was unresponsive when emergency personnel arrived. He was transported to a nearby hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
A postaccident examination of the balloon envelope, basket, fuel tanks, fuel lines, and the dual burner system revealed no damage or anomalies.
The pilot had previously mentioned to the student pilot that he felt unwell, and his postaccident medical examination demonstrated significant cardiomegaly and evidence of pulmonary edema, which supported his symptoms. This suggests that he had some degree of heart failure before the accident, which caused fluid to build up in his lungs and likely shortness of breath. It is likely that the pilot's underlying heart disease and pulmonary edema distracted him from securing himself in the basket while pulling the vent line to deflate the envelope and contributed to his fall and subsequent injuries. This left the pilot unprepared when the basket tipped over, and resulted in the pilot hitting his head on the balloon's dual burners, causing fatal injuries to his head and neck.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that he was secure in the balloon's basket after landing, which resulted in him falling and striking his head on the burners when the wind caught the envelope and tipped the basket over. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's underlying heart disease and pulmonary edema that distracted him from securing himself in the basket and left him unprepared when the basket tipped over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA245
- Event ID
- 20180630X04432
- Case number
- CEN18LA245
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-06-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 68b9d6f19f5fa4f144cc5afccfd6f35efe708786b099664a097d6c1ea50d8d57; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:43:24.739Z.