Let’s have some balloon flight stories

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  • Anonymous
    Guest

    Globalti
    Participant

    I’ll start: For my 40th birthday my wife arranged for me to go up with a local hot air balloon company. Won’t tell you who but they are often seen floating above Lancashire. It was all kept secret and after several false alarms, which I later realised were weather-related, we got the call one afternoon and and I found myself in a field beside the Ribble with the beginnings of an idea of what might be about to happen. Sure enough a Landy 110 turned up towing a trailer with a huge wicker basket and a bundle of nylon in a box.

    The pilot and his crew got the massive envelope inflated and we all jumped in. At the last moment two hugely obese ladies turned up demanding to be allowed to fly. At first the pilot refused but after much argument he relented and somehow we got the two additions over the wicker side and squeezed in with about six of us and the pilot. Off we went and the pilot seemed to be burning a lot of gas to get us up to an unnecessarily high altitude. I was a little concerned at what looked like thundery weather about ten miles away over Pendle Hill but we stayed clear and drifted very slowly over the town of Blackburn, which is in a sheltered valley. It being evening and a still day, air movement ceased altogether and soon I realised that the pilot was starting to worry about his fuel; he tapped a couple of gauges and swopped a regulator over and began peering over the side looking for a landing site.

    We seemed to be drifting towards the grounds of Blackburn Royal Infirmary, which would have been ideal for landing but then we drifted back to an area of the town called Audley. At chimney height we came close to a small park; the pilot unfurled a rope, which dropped into a terraced street, by now full of over-excited Asian kids who grabbed the rope and ragged it around, not knowing what to do with it. The pilot stared down at them and instead of having the strength of character to instruct them to pull the balloon into the park, he retrieved the rope and rolled it up.

    We drifted aimlessly just above the roofs, narrowly missing the minaret of a mosque and a couple of chimney pots. By now the streets below us were a scene of mayhem with hundreds of Asians, their shalwar kameez flapping, dashing around shouting from street to street. Eventually we drifted above a manky area of waste ground covered in brambles at the back of some houses. The pilot dropped his rope again and this time some older men grabbed it and began pulling the balloon down. We crashed through a small tree and hit the ground, the pilot pulled his rip cord and down came the envelope on top of all the people and the brambles. My rather staid fellow pasengers seemed too shocked to move, staying in the basket and staring aghast at the screaming crowd like missionaries arriving in India. An elderly English woman turned up and began screeching that we had damaged her chimney and she wanted compensation.

    Of the support convoy, my wife and infant son turned up first, having followed us in our Land Rover. My wife was distressed because in squeezing down a side street she had touched the bumper of an old car with the Land-Rover’s side step and the owner was chasing her demanding payment. I jumped out of the basket and went to check the damage, which turned out to be no more than a black rubber scuff on his paintwork. I told him he would be able to polish it off and when he complained I pointed to a Police officer who had just arrived, invited him to discuss it with her and headed back to the balloon to help. The envelope was folded up and stowed and dozens of willing hands helped to lift the basket while the pilot made a mess of reversing his trailer underneath it, having forgotten to drop the reversing clip on his towbar, which compressed up applying the trailer brakes. I had a clear impression of a man not in control and thoroughly flustered by the whole experience.

    The next day the local paper (“Balloon Crash-Lands in Blackburn!”) revealed that the same pilot had been investigated by the CAA the year before after a passenger broke a leg on landing.

    Never again!


    TiredOldHack
    Participant

    I’ve been crewing balloons for many years. I was training as a pilot, 25 years ago, but the kids came along and it’s expensive. I keep thinking I ought to pick it up again, especially as I introduced my oldest friend to it and he now owns a balloon. We’re probably doing Albuquerque (the massive US fiesta) next year.

    Your pilot sounds a liability. I’ve no idea what size balloon he was flying, but if it was a commercial operation and carried that many people, it was a big one. I’d guess at a 180-200 (180,000-200,000 cubic feet).

    He should at the very least have made some sort of load estimate with two fatsos. There was a lot of weight there. Also, a crammed basket is dangerous – the pilot needs to be able to move quite quickly around the basket to change tanks, shut off valves, etc.

    I remember, in the days before the internet, flying from Havering-Atte-Bower, in Essex. We were forecast a south-westerly which would have taken us up into Essex. We didn’t fly because when we put the club balloon up, we found some sod had put a rip in the envelope and not mentioned it. We watched as our companion took off.

    Instead of heading north-east he headed due south. No problem: wind moves in different directions at different altitudes. So he climbed to catch the sou’wester. No joy. He continued to head for Romford. And there he got becalmed. We watched from the hill as he climbed and descended, trying to find a wind current, but there was nothing.

    The problem was he was right in the approach for London City Airport. Oh, and you don’t carry much fuel in a balloon. We were looking at our watches and saying: “Well, in fifteen minutes, come what may, he’s going to be on the ground,” and worrying, because there aren’t many landing sites in Romford. And down he went.

    A few minutes later, three or four airliners followed each other into LCY: they’d obviously been stacked while he was in the way.

    When we all caught up with each other, he said that half of Romford appeared to be below him. He had a mobile phone (rare, then) and called LCY and informed them of his predicament. And, amazingly, there was a school playing field below him, so he was able to land.

    The police were waiting for him as he landed, because they’d been alerted by LCY. They weren’t there to arrest him: they were taking care of the balloon and all the paraphernalia because (in their words): “They’ll nick anything, round here.”

    The CAA did an investigation (flying into the controlled airspace of a TMA is a very serious infraction), but decided he’d done all the right things. He’d taken the forecast, but the wind had unexpectedly changed a very short time after. He’d alerted the airport, and made a sound landing, so no action was taken.


    PeterCoultas
    Participant

    Globalti & TOH: great stories and potentially horrific experiences! Never done a balloon trip but would love one somewhere like Bagan or an african park. Though living in New Mex for some time have much enjoyed watching the ABQ fest.


    AviationGeek
    Participant

    Probably around the shortest balloon flight ever, but also my first and most special-
    The organisers of the RIAT at RAF Fairford invite about 10 balloon teams every year and a few years ago I managed to get to join one of them on a hop at the end of the last day after the flying programme had finished.
    We took off from beside the Flight Centre and landed on the piano keys of RWY 27!
    Puts a smile on my face thinking back to it 🙂


    MartynSinclair
    Participant

    @TOH – well a BT Forum trip in a Hot Air Balloon.. I would be tempted.. how many of us would be needed and what would the approx. cost be…..


    openfly
    Participant

    Two friends went up in a ballon in South Africa as a birthday treat. They crash landed and were in hospital for weeks. The balloon wasn’t insured…cost them a fortune. Both bady injured.
    Moral of the story….check all the insurances!


    MrDarwin
    Participant

    A former employer of mine had a company branded balloon which flew over cities in Australia. As a ‘thank you’ from our boss, she once arranged for a colleague and I to go on a balloon flight over Melbourne.

    Up at the crack of dawn and racing around the deserted streets in the 4WD at 4.30am (balloon in the trailer), the pilot and support crew were busily reading weather and wind information and finally decided on a park near the city as our take off point. The balloon was swiftly inflated and before you could say “I have a morbid fear of heights” we were being hoisted into a basket not much bigger than my washing basket.

    As it was a specialty shaped balloon the basket was really, really small – just enough room for the pilot and 2 passengers. We took off so quickly trying to take advantage of the very light breeze. We ascended rapidly and flew right over the MCG a few minutes later, and it was then that my knees started to go weak thinking about how high the light towers were and that I was probably twice the height of those.

    We drifted towards the city centre and ascended further to avoid flying into the sky scrapers. Up and over the 80+ floor buildings we went and it was such an amazing/terrifying view to look down on the early morning city coming to life. The pilot, sensing my sheer terror at casually drifting above the city skyline in a washing basket, reassured me by telling me to just look at the horizon and I’ll be fine….! It was great to look out and see all the early morning flights in landing patterns coming into Tullamarine.

    A little while later we landed in a park somewhere north of the city, near the zoo I think, and I exhaled for what seemed like the first time in an hour. Thinking back I have no idea what I was thinking going in a balloon with such a terrible fear of heights – but I am so glad I did, it’s such an incredible experience. If you ever get the chance to, go. For the thrillseekers definitely go in a smaller basket!


    TiredOldHack
    Participant

    MartynSinclair – you need a commercial licence, obviously. Plenty of firms out there. A decent commercial balloon will hold 12-20 people.

    Private balloons are generally 77-90s. A 77 will hold two fatties or three skinnies, and a 90 will hold 3/4.

    Be warned that there’s usually weeks of waiting before the weather is right, and even then flights can be scrubbed at the last minute. Balloons fly in the early morning and late evening, when the air is most still.

    The problem is thermal. As the day heats up, you get a lot of thermal activity, and air shooting in all directions, which makes take-off and landing hazardous. On cold clear winter days, you can fly all day, sometimes.

    Cost? About £125 a head for a 40-minute flight.


    TiredOldHack
    Participant

    In fairness to the pilot in Globalti’s story, he did the right thing in not asking the kids to drag the balloon into the park. A big commercial balloon weighs many tonnes, and they’d almost certainly have been dragged themselves or, far worse, been carried aloft if it had suddenly risen again.

    You just don’t ask passers-by to help crew.


    Gin&Tonic
    Participant

    As a Christmas gift some years ago my wife purchased me a balloon ride experience, why I will never know. Whilst I am not a nervous flyer, the thought of a balloon ride does worry me, as with these posts, it’s the landings, they seem so uncontrolled and risky. Following year she bought me a track day experience on a motorbike!! That’s when I checked if she upped the life insurance.


    TiredOldHack
    Participant

    Hah! I remember when we were purchasing some long-term life insurance, and we had to declare any potential hazardous pastimes/occupations.

    “Well, we both ride motorcycles, we both ski, we fly hot air balloons, and my wife works with radioactive material…”


    TerryMcManus24
    Participant

    Takes me back to my first trip up on a balloon…..around 1968-9
    Cold winters day down at RAF Abingdon and it had just stopped snowing so before we could ascend it was necessary to pull the rigging and get rid of about 3 inches of the white stuff.
    Following that …and a hot cup of char 5 of us went up.Balloon was then held at 600 feet and we all stepped out of the door……beautiful day…repeated many times….


    K1ngston
    Participant

    Globalti, you say up in Lancashire? Hmmm wonder if I can persuade the ex wife and her mother to go there on the premise of a gift?????

    As for me I will take the train!


    Globalti
    Participant

    Well thanks to TiredOldHack – what you write about passers-by makes sense.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 26 total)
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