Otago hot air balloon crash: Injured passenger says it felt like free falling in lift

The balloon before it crashed. Photo / Sonja McCord

A Dunedin man says the last 10 seconds of his hot-air balloon trip near Queenstown last week was like free-falling in a hotel lift.

Malcolm Porter described the ordeal he and his wife faced during the Sunrise Balloons crash on a private airstrip in Morven Ferry Rd, near Arrowtown, on Friday morning.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) have launched investigations into the incident.

"It was like coming down a lift at a hotel, full flight, and then just stopping dead," Porter said.

"It was just a rogue gust at the end and everyone just got driven to the bottom of the basket, apart from three people that got thrown out.

"We were the lucky ones."

The pilot and two passengers were thrown from the basket during the landing, Porter said.

Porter was badly bruised and his wife's injuries included a bruised liver due to the sudden impact.

The balloon's basket fell from a height of about 8m, largely sideways.

Eleven people were injured - including two seriously - after a hot air balloon crash landed in Arrowtown on Friday morning. Photo / Supplied

"My knees just went to jelly," he said.

Yesterday, as the shock wore off and the pain set in, he felt as if he had been "riding a horse for 1000 days".

All 11 people on the flight, including pilot Carrick McLellan, survived.

Two people taken to Dunedin Hospital by helicopter after the crash remained there in a stable condition yesterday, a Southern District Health Board spokeswoman said. Both were progressing favourably. Requests for an interview were declined.

CAA deputy chief executive David Harrison said its health and safety investigation was separate from the TAIC inquiry.

CAA teams would be looking at work-related practices to make sure all appropriate processes were in place and followed by the operator, Harrison said.

The CAA investigation provided another layer of investigation to make sure safe practises were in place, or to identify areas that might need closer attention, in order to give people confidence they were safe when travelling by air in any form, Harrison said.

The CAA was unable to comment on the incident further while the investigation was under way, he said.

Earlier, Porter told the Queenstown App the ride had gone smoothly until the crash shortly before 10am.

But when the pilot was thrown from the basket after the initial impact Porter said he feared the balloon would take off again without anyone in control.

Instead, the basket was dragged 300m across a paddock and crashed into a deer fence.

The balloon wrapped itself around a power pole and hit the house at the property.

When it stopped moving everyone was in shock and there was no screaming or yelling.

Passengers slowly pulled themselves out of the basket, helping others, before finding their way in to the nearby house and a woman there got blankets for people lying in the paddock "who weren't moving", Porter said.

The trip had been a birthday gift for Porter's wife from her sister and her partner from Invercargill, both also on board.

All four suffered relatively minor injuries; Porter's wife spent a night in Queenstown's Lakes District Hospital, he said.

The pilot injured his arm and another passenger broke their ankle.

Porter said the pilot came to visit his wife with his arm in a sling to offer her a card and chocolates for her birthday.

Porter said he believed the pilot did all that he could and he had no ill will towards the company.