Speaking to the AP just before leaving for Texas to lead the crash investigation, NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said he was studying the board’s recommendations from previous hot air balloon accidents.
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The balloon was operated by Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides, according to two officials familiar with the investigation who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Robert Sumwalt, an NTSB spokesperson said that there is physical evidence that the balloon hit power lines before the crash and is also trying to determine whether fog was a factor. Sumwalt said it wasn’t clear if it caught fire before or after impact with the power line.
The balloon company said in a recorded telephone message that chief pilot and owner Alfred “Skip” Nichols had died in the crash and all flights were canceled.
Sumwalt said investigators found the basket carrying the 16 people three-quarters of a mile from the balloon itself, indicating the hot air balloon was severed when it struck high-voltage power lines.
The balloon crashed on Saturday into a field near Lockhart, about 30 miles (48 km) south of Austin, on Saturday, killing all of those aboard.
The NTSB urged the FAA two years ago to tighten its regulations on hot air balloon operators or risk a “high number of fatalities in a single air tour balloon accident”. “This will be a hard site for us to work through”, Grosof said. Federal rules already require commercial pilots like her to have their balloons inspected every year or every 100 hours, among other requirements, she said. The crash happened about 7:40 a.m. Saturday. Federal Aviation Administration officials said it caught fire before crashing.
Margaret Wylie, who lives about a quarter-mile from the site, told AP she was letting her dog out when she heard a “pop, pop, pop” and saw what looked “like a fireball going up”.
An online Federal Aviation Administration database said an Alfred G. Nichols of Chesterfield, Missouri, was medically certified to fly in 1996 and was rated a commercial pilot of lighter-than-air balloons on July 14, 2010.
The NTSB has investigated 760 US hot air balloon accidents between 1964 and 2016, 67 of them were fatal.
“The NTSB concludes that passengers who hire air tour balloon operators should have the benefit of a similar level of safety oversight as passengers of air tour airplane and helicopter operations”, the letter said.
He said that Sunday Rowan, who had a young son who wasn’t with them that morning, worked at a clothing store and Matt Rowan was a researcher and scientist at Brooke Army Medical Center.
In order to help investigators piece together what happened, they will be interviewing the balloon crew as well as look at the balloon’s maintenance records. Nichols, 49, is also the registered owner of Missouri-based Air Balloon Sports LLC. Calls to Heart of Texas operations manager Sarah Nichols, 72, rang unanswered, and a woman in Missouri believed to be his sister did not return calls seeking comment. The company’s Facebook page has photos of a hot air balloon flying with a smiley face with sunglasses on it, people waving from a large basket on the ground and group selfies taken while aloft. “It really made you smile and that was just the kind of guy that he was”. The balloon crashed Saturday morning. Looking back, he said that shows how much the company prioritized safety.
The FAA’s response to the recommendations was “unacceptable”, Sumwalt said Sunday.
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FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said it’s hard to say whether the Texas crash will cause the agency to reconsider NTSB’s recommendations “until we’ve had a chance to gather and examine the evidence in this particular case”.
