What happened
On 22 November 2025, 3 balloons took off at dawn from a launch site near Mareeba, Queensland, to conduct scenic hot air balloon flights. The weather had light southerly surface winds, moderate north-easterly winds in the mid layers and stronger south‑easterly winds in the higher altitudes.
As the morning progressed, the surface winds died down while the mid layers became less consistent, resulting in the pilots conducting steeper descents into their landing areas.
One of the balloons, a Kavanagh Balloons G-450, landed moderately hard resulting in injury to an elderly passenger. Initially the passenger did not seek medical attention but later in the day X-rays were conducted, and it was determined that the passenger sustained fractures to both tibias with the left tibia becoming displaced.
Safety message
The ATSB recently published a Safety study into Australian balloon transport operation occurrences from 2014 to 2022 (AS-2023-002) which found that injuries, serious incidents and accidents were all more likely to occur during landing than any other phase of flight. For the period 2014–2022, the ATSB occurrence database recorded 58 minor injuries and 18 serious injuries sustained in commercial ballooning with layover and hard landings having contributed to the largest number of serious injuries. These resulted from balloon passengers being unrestrained within the basket and, in some occurrences, adopting an incorrect landing position. Wind was the most common factor reported to have contributed to these occurrences.
Balloon pilots are encouraged to use all available resources including passenger demonstrations and safety briefing cards to ensure that every passenger understands the landing position and its importance, and approved Bureau of Meteorology products, to ensure they understand the weather, particularly the wind, and its influence on flight safety.
The ATSB SafetyWatch highlights the broad safety concerns that come out of our investigation findings and from the occurrence data reported to us by industry. One of the safety concerns is Reducing passenger injuries in commercial ballooning operations.
About this report
Decisions regarding whether to conduct an investigation, and the scope of an investigation, are based on many factors, including the level of safety benefit likely to be obtained from an investigation. For this occurrence, no investigation has been conducted and the ATSB did not verify the accuracy of the information. A brief description has been written using information supplied in the notification and any follow-up information in order to produce a short summary report, and allow for greater industry awareness of potential safety issues and possible safety actions.