WPR20CA263 · Lindstrand 310A
Wyoming Balloon Lindstrand 310A · Accident: hard landing
From Jackson, WY to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20CA263
- 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
Lindstrand 310A
- Aircraft type
- Lindstrand 310
- 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
- N971LB
- Operator
- Wyoming Balloon
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson, WYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2011)
- 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
- None
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 reported that before the flight he checked the weather in the area for the balloon flight which indicated light and variable wind conditions about 4-5 knots and no forecasted weather that would adversely affect the flight. At the conclusion of the flight, and as the balloon approached the ground, the wind picked up causing the balloon to descend and the basket lightly touched the ground. After recovery from the unintended landing, the pilot maneuvered to land the balloon. The balloon picked up and gained altitude when there was a sudden 180o wind shift. The ground speed increased, and the balloon started a descent. The pilot used multiple burners but could not arrest the rate of descent. The pilot commanded the passengers to get down and the balloon touched down around 20 mph on an irrigation ditch which tilted the basket. The pilot was ejected from the basket and the balloon drifted back into the air. The pilot yelled to the passengers to pull the red Q-vent line for a fast deflation system to stop the balloon from climbing higher. The balloon started its descent back into the high ground wind, landed and was dragged into a cattle fence. The pilot was not injured. Two passengers were seriously injured, and 13 passengers received minor injuries. The balloon was not damaged. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the balloon that would have precluded normal operation. A weather study of the area revealed that the weather encountered was not forecasted.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inability to arrest the descent rate when the balloon encountered unforecasted high ground wind that resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20CA263
- Event ID
- 20200803X34135
- Case number
- WPR20CA263
- 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, damage. 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: 76d509a239fbea31adc0ef3361b98e4014db023417577e1d87c817e4a1175c8e; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:21:19.261Z.