Balloon Works FIREFLY 8B-15
N3081K is a Balloon Works FIREFLY 8B-15, a balloon with no engine. It has 1 seat. It is registered to an individual in Binghamton, New York. The registration is valid: it was issued on December 18, 2019 and expires on December 31, 2029. It holds a standard airworthiness certificate for balloon, dated May 22, 1996.
Aircraft
- Maker
- Balloon Works
- Model
- FIREFLY 8B-15 · all FIREFLY 8B-15s and related versions
- Serial number
- F8B-498
- Type
- Balloon
- Power
- None · None NONE
- Seats
- 1
- Year built
- Not given
- Transponder code
- A33F8F (octal 50637617)
Registration
- Status
- Valid registration
- Certificate issued
- December 18, 2019
- Expires
- December 31, 2029
- Last FAA action
- September 22, 2023
- Airworthiness
- Standard · Balloon · May 22, 1996
- FAA region
- Eastern
- FAA record id
- 00315761
Owner as the FAA publishes it
- Name
- Berka Joel M
- Type
- Individual
- Address
- 140 Krager Rd
Binghamton, NY 13904-1155
Owners can ask the FAA to withhold their name and address from public files. When they do, those fields are blank here as well. How that works.
Documents on file 0
No bills of sale, loans or other documents are indexed against this tail number.
Earlier use of this number 1
Records check free · 1 to understand · 3 clear
The public federal record on N3081K, read the way a buyer, lender or insurer reads it: FAA registration, prior tail numbers keyed on the serial number, reuse of the tail number, recent registry filings, and the NTSB accident record under this and every earlier registration.
Valid registration to Berka Joel M, an individual, certificate issued December 18, 2019, expires December 31, 2029. No fractional interest recorded. [1]
Standard certificate for balloon; the FAA file gives no certificate date and no manufacture year. [1]
No earlier tail number is recorded against serial F8B-498 for this model in the deregistered file. [2]
N3081K was previously assigned to 1 other aircraft: Culver V (serial V-300, cancelled February 11, 1948). Histories keyed to the tail number alone can mix aircraft up; this check keys on the serial number. [2]
No bills of sale, loans or releases have reached the registry in recent weeks. The index covers only recent filings; older liens are in the records file. [3]
No NTSB investigation records located under N3081K. CLEAR means the query ran and returned nothing, not that nothing ever happened. [4]
These live in the FAA aircraft records file (every document ever filed against the aircraft) and, for larger aircraft, the International Registry. Part of the full report.
AD compliance against the logbooks and flight-activity reconciliation are researched layers of the full report.
- FAA Releasable Aircraft Database, master file, file of October 2, 2026. registry.faa.gov/
- FAA deregistered aircraft file (part of the same download), file of October 2, 2026. registry.faa.gov/
- FAA document index: registry documents received in recent weeks, file of October 2, 2026. registry.faa.gov/
- NTSB aviation accident database (CAROL), records through August 27, 2026. data.ntsb.gov/carol-main-public/basic-search
This automated check reads the public federal record. Nothing here is a legal opinion, an appraisal or a statement about the aircraft's condition; a CLEAR line is a statement about the searched record, not the aircraft.
Source: FAA Civil Aviation Registry, Releasable Aircraft Database, October 2, 2026. See this record on the FAA site · This record as data