Hot air balloons..... A hellish ride to a fiery plunging death

Ominous presence of high tension lines near crash. It happened recently where a balloon hit some wires and burned.

 

I have been up twice in a hot air balloon and I didn't wear a hat the first time but after experiencing the intense heat on the top of my head from the burner, I wore a hat the second flight. There is a lot more heat in the process of keeping the bag filled out than I imagined and if it somehow gets away from the operator it wouldn't take long to cause a big problem.

 

I have traveled in a number of balloons.How a fire can start in the basket,? no idea. The burner is way above that. Never experienced any heat when fired up. Heat rises,fills the bag,simple.In UK,most baskets will take up to eight pax. Very few problems,pilots are CAA qualified,and commercial (paying ) flights are well controlled and regulated. As in any sport,there will be the odd happening,...that's life.

 

We launch hundreds every year in Albuquerque and see a fatal accident about every three years or so. Most are caused by hitting high tension wires and preliminary evidence would seem to indicate that is what happened in Texas.

All the pilots who take up paying passengers are certified here in the States, but stuff happens. Friends ask me if I want to go up, but after letting people shoot at me while flying around for a living, cannot see an upside.

 

Well, they just announced on CNN that the basket hit the high tension lines and caught fire at that point. Pilot error?

 

There were 4 of us on board and perhaps it was a smaller balloon but the top of my head got too warm for comfort and others mentioned it also.

 

Sorry to see such a thing happen.. RIP to those on board.

Anything that moves stuff can happen, pilot error etc.

I have been a couple of times and enjoyed the heck out of it. The silence is otherwordly just drifting over the countryside.. Smell the grass and hear any animals.

The companies I went with went when weather and winds were good for it only and were incredibly responsible, as anything airborne should be.

I'd go again anytime, along with pretty much anything else that flies.. I enjoy the widest possible variety.

 

Good man, Mate!

 

Bungee jumped out of one once. Kind of a PITA dangling 100' in the air while they brought the balloon down.

 

Been up in one once at the Albuquerque intl. Ballon fiesta most boring thing i ever done.some people enjoy it and have a love for it.

 

Congrats on simultaneously doing the 2 things I've vowed never to do.

 

Balloon pilot was very experienced, but may not have had much time in the 8500 m3 balloon with a full load of pax (ton and a half to two tons of payload probably). Balloon probably did not react fast enough to go over the wires and may have been too big to go under.

 

Definitely too big to go under. I'll bet that he was trying to go over and just didn't quite have enough lift with the full load.

Maybe they need to find a lightweight material for the baskets that is fire-resistant and non-conductive. It needs to be light and strong.

But if the balloon is not grounded when the basket hits the wire, why would it catch fire? Why do birds that alight on electrical wires not get fried feet?

 

The birds, and repair people only touch one wire at a time... no circuit.

The balloon would have had to touch 2 wires to short the circuit.


A lot of the repairs are done with helicopters... only touch one wire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ix0Gz0ABaI

Much easier than climbing up and down the towers.

 

there are pics taken 5 minutes before the fire ,that show the balloon at 50' up -going sideways,so maybe no clearance to get over power lines

 

My number two son worked as a high lineman for Bonneville Power and he had to repair the insulation on several high tension cables that had been damaged by a Glassair that hit them in a fatal incident. He had a little trolley in which he rode on the wire to go out to make the repair. he said that he had to look down once in a while at the wreckage below because he remembered that the dead pilot was a friend of ours that flew at Thun Field with us. Anyway, if you're touching one wire and don't ground it, you're okay. But, if you contact two wires and bridge them with a conductor, you're going to have a bad day.

 

The one in Egypt -- 2013? -- had just come in to land when one of the basket propane lines failed and belched high pressure fire at the pilot, lighting his head on fire ... he dove out of the basket from about 20 feet up as did one other passenger who was unhurt ... the heat from the fire made the balloon want to rise, the ground crew dropped the tether and it rocketed up to 1000 feet in flames before the balloon broke and it came crashing down. Everyone else perished, including the surviving passenger's wife. Horrific.

There was some video in Texas on LiveLeak that showed what looked to be the basket hung up on the power lines in flames as the first responders were arriving. The balloon itself was intact on the ground later but the basket was destroyed.

 

Chatting with my son who worked for BPA tonight. He said that the power lines appeared to be three tiers of lines carrying 230,000 volts of current each. Not good to cross with a conductor.

 

I think liveleak pulled the footage. Would be interesting to see.

 

Here is an example from New Mexico a couple years back:


Hot air balloon crashes after hitting power line; two burned
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

When I was a Cadet on the Wings of Blue, we used to bum one way rides in hot air balloons every chance we could while at airshows. They are a blast to jump out of. I never really thought of them as being any more or less dangerous than all of the other silly things humans do day in and day out.

 

Footage is here:

LiveLeak.com - 16 Dead in Texas Balloon Crash - First Video Before Police/Fire Arrive

There were some reports of fog in the area but you can see from that footage that it was pretty clear in the area around the power lines. Also, the balloon was scheduled to depart at sunrise but was delayed for 45 minutes for some reason.

Now AP is reporting that the pilot had an earlier DWI charge in Missouri and had been on probation there for a controlled substance charge. His company, which apparently was not registered in Texas, but in Missouri, where he had operated in the past, had a D- rating from the BBB for not responding to customer complaints. He had declined to discuss the drug charges with the St. Louis Post Dispatch back in 2008. A friend of his said he was a good pilot and moved his business to Texas because there was less competition.

The balloon manufacturer mandated annual inspections of the balloon but Texas has no requirements for inspections or anything else, apparently. He was certified to fly by the FAA but that seems to just be a medical certification.

The AP quoted another balloon pilot in the area who said due to the heat at this time of year you had about a 2-hour window after sunrise to fly a balloon before it became too hot to keep it aloft. Another balloon pilot said elsewhere online that a 300,000 cubic foot envelope at those temperatures was too small to carry 16 people, and that 500,000 would have been appropriate in his view.

The NTSB had previously asked the FAA to regulate these businesses but the FAA declined.

You see these sorts of operations and you just assume that they are inspected and regulated and that everything will be fine, that is not always the case.

 

That video is from 2012 and has been intentionally misrepresented starting about 2 days ago. Here is that videos original posting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-ZNQDzZNAY

Couple of other points. The balloon took of after a 20 minute delay which is easy to see as being more accurate. Scheduled departure 6:45, actual 7:05, covered 8 miles and line hit at 7:42.
And the FAA database shows the pilot held a commercial balloon pilot license which includes, amongst other things, a check ride ie much more than med cert. The DWI is reported as being from 2000. And some paper I read did interview the guy (Philip Bryant) that did the balloon's annual inspections for him.

-mick