WPR20CA267 · Cameron A 315
Wyoming Balloon Cameron A 315 · Accident: hard landing
From Teton Village, WY to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20CA267
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Cameron A 315
- Aircraft type
- Cameron A-315
- 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
- N12171
- Operator
- Wyoming Balloon
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Teton Village, WYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2006)
- 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 balloon pilot reported that while on final approach to land, about 20 ft above the ground, he saw two balloons he was following, both on their final approaches, suddenly reverse direction, by a strong wind from the southwest. Shortly after, the accident balloon lifted about 50 ft above the ground, followed by a downdraft. The pilot maneuvered the balloon to land and activated both burners to cushion the landing. When the descent rate was less than 500 ft per minute, he deactivated the burners and shouted to the passengers to “hold on” and pulled the quick vent deflate line before touchdown. The balloon landed hard, skidded on its side about 300 ft, and came to rest against an irrigation ditch embankment. The balloon sustained substantial damage to the envelope and a passenger sustained a serious injury. The balloon pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures to the balloon that would have precluded normal operation. A weather study revealed that the weather encountered by the balloon flight was not forecasted.
Probable cause
The balloon pilot’s inability to maintain the proper descent rate during the balloon’s approach to landing during un-forecasted weather, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20CA267
- Event ID
- 20200803X34051
- Case number
- WPR20CA267
- 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: afafd88d1b84b87634059fc50e453e431bc2a3ff13f71cc8a47c0c6bf7b73f16; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:21:07.940Z.