WPR19LA257 · Kubicek BB60 Z
Vegas Hot Air Sin City Balloon Rides Kubicek BB60 Z · Accident: hard landing
From Las Vegas, NV to Las Vegas, NV
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA257
- 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 BB60 Z
- Aircraft type
- Kubicek BB60
- 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
- N505CZ
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Las Vegas, NVTo Las Vegas, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2018)
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that, after about 1 hour into the flight, the wind changed, and the balloon’s direction shifted south toward terrain that was not suitable for a balloon landing. The pilot then aligned the balloon with a more suitable landing location and began the descent. As the balloon neared the surface, the wind increased, and the pilot briefed the passengers of a potential high-wind landing. He pulled the vent line, but the balloon did not deflate as he expected. The balloon landed hard, and the pilot and several passengers were ejected from the basket. Afterward, the balloon flew at a low level for about 0.5 mile, and the remaining three passengers were ejected from the basket. The balloon came to rest on a hillside in remote desert terrain. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the balloon.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the proper descent rate during the approach to landing, which resulted in a hard landing and serious injuries to the pilot and two passengers.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA257
- Event ID
- 20190912X81942
- Case number
- WPR19LA257
- 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: 93a488101065a740154793a0fb39a06873f9b290851dab361a549f6577cac5e7; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:03:57.287Z.