CEN23LA305 · Adams Balloon AB
Adams Balloon AB · Accident: hard landing
From Erie, CO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA305
- 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
Adams Balloon AB
- Aircraft type
- Adams Balloon AB
- 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
- N895FA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Erie, COTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2021)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While conducting a sightseeing flight for a balloon festival, the pilot noted wind about 17 miles per hour (mph). He was unable to locate calmer winds at different altitudes. The pilot decided to terminate the flight and briefed the passengers for a high wind landing. During the high wind landing, the basket touched down hard and began to drag. One passenger was ejected from the basket which resulted in the balloon becoming airborne. The pilot was releasing air through the top vent and the balloon settled again to the ground and dragged to a stop. The passenger who was ejected and another passenger that remained in the basket were seriously injured. The pilot and two passengers had minor injuries. There were no mechanical malfunctions with the balloon. Prior to the flight, the pilot obtained a weather brief, and the weather forecast reported a front to pass around 0800. After considering the weather, the pilot decided to launch on a low, short flight between 30 to 45 minutes. The pilot reported that he launched at 0643 and a couple minutes later, he noticed the winds aloft were stronger than expected and attempted to find a suitable landing area. On the pilot’s weather forecast, obtained several hours prior to the flight, the velocity and direction (VAD) winds showed wind at 5,900 ft mean sea level (msl) at 19 kts, which increased to 26 kts at 6,200 ft msl. At 0655, the closest aviation weather reporting facility reported a calm wind. At 0715, the same facility reported wind at 5 knots gusting to 15 knots.
Probable cause
An inadvertent hard landing in high wind conditions resulting in serious injury of two passengers. Contributing to the accident was the increase in prevailing winds prior to the forecast.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA305
- Event ID
- 20230714192627
- Case number
- CEN23LA305
- 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, 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: eb40d7acc2b96d5be74270fd4176fc6c2fd4ae64acff11bd10daec254bd8e3a4; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:51:43.052Z.