Balloon Works FIREFLY 8B-15
N3290D is a Balloon Works FIREFLY 8B-15, a balloon with no engine, built in 1996. It has 1 seat. It is registered to an individual in Newport News, Virginia. The registration is valid: it was issued on October 22, 2024 and expires on October 31, 2031. It holds a standard airworthiness certificate for balloon, dated September 3, 1996.
Aircraft
- Maker
- Balloon Works
- Model
- FIREFLY 8B-15 · all FIREFLY 8B-15s and related versions
- Serial number
- F8B-516
- Type
- Balloon
- Power
- None · None NONE
- Seats
- 1
- Year built
- 1996
- Transponder code
- A3921B (octal 50711033)
Registration
- Status
- Valid registration
- Certificate issued
- October 22, 2024
- Expires
- October 31, 2031
- Last FAA action
- October 22, 2024
- Airworthiness
- Standard · Balloon · September 3, 1996
- FAA region
- Eastern
- FAA record id
- 00886151
Owner as the FAA publishes it
- Name
- Nelson William M
- Type
- Individual
- Address
- 7501 River Rd Apt 11D
Newport News, VA 23607-1770
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.
Records check free · 0 to understand · 5 clear
The public federal record on N3290D, 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 Nelson William M, an individual, certificate issued October 22, 2024, expires October 31, 2031. No fractional interest recorded. [1]
Standard certificate for balloon, dated September 3, 1996, consistent with the 1996 manufacture year. [1]
No earlier tail number is recorded against serial F8B-516 for this model in the deregistered file. [2]
No other airframe has carried N3290D according to the deregistered file. [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 N3290D. 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