WPR19TA110 · Kubicek BB100 Z
Kubicek BB100 Z · Accident: hard landing
From Windsor, CA to Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19TA110
- 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
Kubicek BB100 Z
- Aircraft type
- Kubicek BB100
- 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
- N355WC
- Operator
- Sonoma Thunder
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Windsor, CATo Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS), Santa Rosa, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2016)
- 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
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a routine flight, after reviewing the weather forecast, including wind and temperatures aloft. Additionally, he received weather information from his boss, who used pilot balloons to find prevailing winds, that the winds were favorable to their southern direction of flight. After an uneventful departure, the balloon started to drift northwest, but the accident pilot rapidly climbed to 3,000 ft at which point the balloon was diverted by winds from the northwest. According to passengers, the balloon pilot did not provide any safety instructions or emergency procedures prior to departure, nor did he during the accident flight until his first landing attempt. After about 1 hour and 45 minutes of flight the pilot decided to land on a small plot of terrain as he was unfamiliar with the terrain east of their position. The pilot did not recite any safety instructions prior to the balloon's impact with the ground, but instead he informed the passengers to brace for impact. The balloon impacted a blackberry bush, which likely absorbed some of the vertical energy. After a brief ascent, the balloon impacted the ground hard a second time and came to rest. One passenger was seriously injured. It is likely that the pilot balloons released by the company owner to find the prevailing winds indicated desirable winds at lower altitudes. As the wind was not forecasted to be in a southeast direction below 3,000 ft. The balloon pilot's encounter with unforecasted wind conditions likely resulted in his decision to land in unsuitable terrain, which resulted in a hard landing and serious injuries. Further, although he did deliver some safety instructions during the flight, several passengers were unclear on the emergency procedure and the pilot did not clarify his instructions when prompted. Thus, the pilot's lack of a thorough and clear safety briefing may have prevented some of the passengers from securing themselves properly for the abnormal landing.
Probable cause
The balloon pilot's encounter with unforecasted wind, which resulted in his decision to land in unsuitable terrain and a subsequent hard landing. Contributing to the severity of passenger injury was the pilot’s failure to provide a proper safety briefing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19TA110
- Event ID
- 20190414X23408
- Case number
- WPR19TA110
- 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: d6dc65ecb989da8554f0d0a597ac668f02baee418991ec7a271888fdb27490ca; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:44:03.824Z.