WPR19LA228 · Head AX9-118
Head AX9-118 · Accident: other weather encounter
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA228
- 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 AX9-118
- Aircraft type
- Head AX9
- 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
- N2027S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2013)
- 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
- Other
- 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
- Other weather encounter
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was giving rides during a balloon festival while the balloon remained tethered to three cars. The wind increased, and the pilot decided to stop performing flights. As he was in the process of deflating the envelope, a wind gust caused the balloon to ascend rapidly. The ground crew let go of the ropes, and the balloon ascended to the end of the tethers. One of the eye bolt attachments from the basket to the rope broke, allowing the rope to come loose, followed by the failure of a second eye bolt attachment, which allowed the second rope to come loose. At that point, the ground crew was attempting to hold the third rope when the pilot told them to cut it loose. The pilot applied the burner to heat the envelope and rise above powerlines; however, as the crew cut the remaining rope, the basket twisted, which closed the throat of the envelope. The balloon continued toward a nearby open field, where the pilot chose to land. The pilot stated that, with the envelope only partially inflated, the descent was fast and the balloon landed hard. He turned off the burners and the balloon envelope deflated onto its side.
Probable cause
A loss of control following an adverse wind encounter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA228
- Event ID
- 20190812X01150
- Case number
- WPR19LA228
- 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, cause areas. 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: 5e3b7ad7feb7fee5f10a01f9220d8a504c63013f0d8a77f15f159b4d3d0ae684; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:43:11.036Z.