“The potential for a high number of fatalities in a single air tour balloon accident is of particular concern if air tour balloon operators continue to conduct operations under less stringent regulations and oversight”, wrote Ms. Hersman. Winds over 20 miles per hour, low-lying clouds and fog could all wreak havoc during balloon flights, she said.
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The company said it had not been in contact with relatives of those killed in the crash as it was being probed by US investigators.
In its report two years ago, the NTSB noted that the USA had so far escaped a mass-casualty balloon accident but warned that greater safeguards were needed.
“They’ve been busy trying to collect the maintenance records for us”, Sumwalt said of the crew.
The family of three and five other passengers were in the air with Nichols when, the family contended, Nichols said he had run out of propane and the balloon began to fall.
According to media reports and gofundme pages, Brian and Tressie Neill, Paige and Lorilee Brabson, and Matt and Sunday Rowan all perished in the crash.
At the press conference Sunday, Sumwalt said the NTSB believes the FAA, the agency that regulates hot air balloons, should have greater oversight on the operations. She leaves behind a young daughter. “I don’t understand what the air balloon pilot was doing, I mean I don’t think it was cloudy and I don’t know why he was so close to the transmission lines”.
The couple met the Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides pilot and 13 other passengers in a Walmart parking lot at 5:45 a.m., officials said, then traveled to an airpark for their 6:45 a.m. departure.
Missouri court records also show that Nichols settled a personal injury lawsuit in 2013 that was filed by one of eight passengers in his balloon that crash-landed in suburban St. Louis. Missouri records also listed Nichols as the owner of Air Balloon Sports LLC, based from the same Chesterfield address as the FAA record.
The partial frame of a hot air balloon is visible above a crop field at a field near Lockhart, Texas where a hot air balloon carrying at least 16 people collided with power lines, July 30, 2016. Nichols’ Facebook page identifies him as the chief pilot. Nichols wasn’t part of her group, Kaim said.
Sumwalt said a fire expert will help investigate the crash, which is the deadliest such accident in US history.
In Hersman’s 2014 letter to Mr. Huerta, the NTSB recommended the FAA should subject tour balloon operators to the same regulations as their commercial airplane and helicopter counterparts.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that in 2008, the Better Business Bureau warned consumers about doing business with Nichols after complaints about his balloon-touring company.
Two passengers were hurt and it was not clear if Mr Nichols was flying it at the time. Nichols brought his balloon into his inspection facility in May 2014 and was issued a one-year recertification, Bryant said.
“He was a good pilot and loved people”, she said, adding that he’d been involved with hot air balloons for about two decades. Nichols blamed lack of wind.
A Federal Aviation Administration accident report shows that a balloon registered to Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides made a hard landing in a church soccer field on August 3, 2014.
Ms Bartch said “there had been a mending” in Nichols’s relationship with his father in recent years.
“That’s the only thing I want to talk about, is that he’s a great pilot”, Lirette said, speaking to the AP from a house he shared with Nichols in Kyle.
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Online records in Missouri’s St. Louis County show Nichols pleaded guilty to drunk driving charges at least three times between 1990 and 2010, as well as several other vehicular charges. To keep his St. Louis business going, he started offering flights in Texas in the winter when St. Louis was rainy and cold.
