One person was seriously injured in a harrowing hot air balloon landing near Las Vegas on Thursday.
All nine passengers, including one pilot, fell from the basket. Five were ejected at first when the balloon hit the desert ground, Sgt. Jeff Dean of the Las Vegas police said in a statement.
The basket dragged for about a kilometre before the other four people fell out, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said.
Dean said that one woman was airlifted with injuries and is expected to survive, ABC News reports.
All passengers were eventually transferred to hospital to examine their injuries.
As yet, the FAA hasn’t discovered any cause for the rough landing.
Back in 2016, a hot air balloon crash in Texas killed all 16 people who were on board.
The balloon caught fire in the air after colliding with power lines around 7:30 a.m., before it dropped into an area commonly used for hot air balloon landings, CNN reported at the time.
According to a statement published to the Caldwell County Office of Emergency Manager’s Facebook page, police officers responded to a 911 call at 8:44 a.m.
Balloon pilot Philip Bryant, who knew the deceased pilot well, described him as a “safe” driver.
“I don’t know what would distract a pilot from seeing what was in front of him, but in this case that’s apparently what happened,” he told CNN in 2016.
Earlier this year in February, a hot air balloon similarly crashed into power lines at the Vernon Winter Carnival.
Officers made contact with the pilot and the six passengers onboard the balloon at the time of the incident, Const. Kelly Brett said in a news release at the time.
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No injuries were reported to the RCMP in that incident, and no obvious signs of damage to the power lines, but B.C. hydro was notified.
In August 2007, a balloon carrying one dozen passengers crash-landed in a farmer’s field north of Winnipeg.
Witnesses said the balloon bounced six times before the basket flipped upside down and burst into flames.
Two were injured, but nobody died in that crash.
—With files from Kimberly Davidson