CEN23LA325 · Ultramagic SA N-210
Ultramagic SA N-210 · Accident: hard landing
From Erie, CO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA325
- 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
- 0
- 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
Ultramagic SA N-210
- Aircraft type
- Ultramagic N-210
- 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
- N1958S
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while conducting a sightseeing flight, the surface wind increased earlier than forecast. He decided to terminate the flight and make a high wind landing. He briefed his passengers that they were going to land quicky and drag to a stop. He reminded them to stay in the basket and hold on. The balloon skipped twice after contacting the ground and then dragged to a stop. One of the passengers was ejected and her hair was caught under the basket. She sustained minor injuries. Two other passengers remained in the basket but sustained serious injurious. The pilot sustained minor injuries and the remaining three passengers were not injured. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the balloon that would have precluded normal operation. Prior to the flight, the pilot obtained a weather brief, and the weather forecast reported a front to pass around 0800. A terminal aerodrome forecast (TAF) for Rocky Mountain Metro Airport (BJC) about 7 miles southwest of Erie, Colorado, forecast wind to be out of the northwest at 7 knots at 0300 and then shift to wind out of the northeast at 12 knots around 0800. When the pilot launched the balloon in Erie at 0638, the wind was calm. About half an hour after launch, reported surface wind in Erie was out of the northeast at 5 knots gusting 15 knots.
Probable cause
A hard landing due to the high wind conditions which resulted in two passengers sustaining serious injuries.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA325
- Event ID
- 20230726192716
- Case number
- CEN23LA325
- 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: 315e097a416b12aab352c1204da490086428664afdae30d7ed5fc1a3109d85c9; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:54:43.085Z.