ELOY, AZ — The investigation looking into what happened during a hot air balloon flight over Eloy that left four people dead will come in two separate reports — a preliminary and a final.
There are only so many places in the world where adrenaline-seeking, experienced skydivers can jump off a hot air balloon and Arizona is one of them.
There were over a dozen people on board, most of them skydiving off the gondola before the weekend crash.
Realtor Tanya Toliver and her fiancé David Boone met within the sky-diving community.
Toliver shared a video of a prior skydive where she jumped the same gondola involved in Sunday’s crash.
The couple knew the pilot, Cornelius Van Der Walt.
“Cornelius is always super careful, he’s always very, very aware, he’s been doing it for a long, long time...he only got better with time. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of it, what happened," said Boone.
Boone explained, that to jump with a parachute from a hot air balloon, you’re required to have a certain license with prerequisites of at least 50 prior jumps. The balloon has to be on the way down and at around 10,000 feet.
What happened after eight skydivers jumped off the balloon over the desert in Eloy is the key question for the NTSB over the next 12-24 months.
Mike Slack is an engineer, pilot and aviation attorney who worked alongside investigators after the 2016 hot air balloon crash in Lockhart, Texas.
Slack said that out of all aircraft, hot air balloons have the least amount of control while landing.
The balloon ride in Lockhart happened during a foggy morning. The gondola dragged along a powerline before crashing, killing 16 people on board.
Slack pointed out that the gondola in both the Lockhart and Eloy crashes are the same make and model.
Over the next two to three weeks, he said the NTSB will be working on a preliminary report that ranges from weather, balloon maintenance, and pilot experience before a full report is completed later.
The preliminary report won’t have a probable cause.
What makes the Eloy crash unique is the change in the number of passengers while in the air.
”If you’re going to have skydivers leaving a hot air balloon, there needs to be some attention paid to that particular activity and deserving of a regulatory treatment,” said Slack.
In the 2016 crash in Central Texas, the NTSB’s report said there was a lack of targeted FAA oversight of potentially risky commercial balloon operations.
“The question is, is that lax oversight a factor in this balloon crash?” asked Slack.
