Balloon

The flight on Sunday morning marks the second test of the company’s Spaceship Neptune vehicle, which will float to about 100,000 feet in altitude.

The scenic flight was to view the ruins of Teotihuacan near Mexico City.

Congress mandated the medical certificate rule based on a 2018 NTSB recommendation after a hot air balloon carrying 16 people crashed into power lines, killing all aboard.

The first free flight of a manned balloon took place, as is well known, in France. The king, who took an interest in the experiments of the Montgolfier brothers, suggested that the passengers on the first manned flight should be two convicts, whom he considered expendable. He was persuaded, however, that the honor of being […]

Remember that terrible hot-air balloon crash in central Texas a few summers back? The accident claimed 16 lives, including the pilot’s, when the balloon struck high-tension power lines following a short, early-morning flight. The crash claimed more lives than any other aviation accident in the previous seven years. Not to mention this was only a […]

While the 46th Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta drifted into the sunset a few weeks ago, the numbers are in and this year’s event was an incredible success. An estimated 887,970 people watched more than 650 balloons from 21 countries take to the New Mexico sky with colorful, mesmerizing and even hilarious designs, certainly driving home […]

The National Transportation Safety Board this week called upon the FAA to treat balloon pilots like all others by requiring them to possess a current medical certificate. Currently, balloon pilots are exempt from medical certificate requirement in order to conduct commercial operations. In an abstract of the soon-to-be-released final report, the NTSB took the FAA […]

NASA’s super pressure balloon hit a new milestone on Tuesday, completing its first circumnavigation of the globe after 14 days, 13 hours and 17 minutes of flight. Flying the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) payload, the 18.8 million-cubic-foot balloon departed from Wanaka Airport, New Zealand, and flew at 53.85 knots, at an altitude of 110,170 […]

My balloon career launched modestly (sort of) when a delightful, brilliant, eccentric friend named Frank Wood decided he had to have a balloon for fun and to promote his rather outrageous WEBN radio station in Cincinnati. He built it and aired a classical music format until son Beau convinced him that wouldn’t “fly” and they […]

My last day at Sun ‘n Fun was Saturday. And what a day it was. It might be that my colleagues here at Flying, who, between them, have thousands of hours logged in fancier airplanes, many type ratings under there belts and incredible wealth of knowledge about flying — heights, granted, that I will never […]