Hot Air Balloon Mishap, 3 survive

diabolical

diabolical

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www.mprnews.org

3 people escape serious injury after hot-air balloon crash in Rochester

Three passengers of a hot-air balloon escaped serious injury Wednesday evening after the balloon collided with power lines in Rochester and fell to the ground.
www.mprnews.org www.mprnews.org
This is about as lucky as you can get to survive an incident with high voltage lines!
Those passengers should be buying the Lottery tickets!
 
Yep, 15 years ago a friend hit powerlines at the Albuquerque Baloon Festival. It killed the pilot-rated passenger. Keith broke just about every bone in his body but survived.
 
I love the idea of flying in, or is it on, a balloon. However, surrendering so much control to Mother Nature just don’t appeal so much. Probably don’t understand it enough. I think im going to stick to slipping the bonds of Earth in something not squishy! Seriously glad all these folks are going to be okay.
 
Ah balloon flying, riding in a wicker basket under a big flammable parachute with a flame thrower and a propane tank. What could possibly go wrong?
 
Can't believe how long it took me to find this gem

Screen Shot 2024-03-22 at 1.14.28 PM.png
 
Joepilotmsp said:
I love the idea of flying in, or is it on, a balloon. However, surrendering so much control to Mother Nature just don’t appeal so much. Probably don’t understand it enough. I think im going to stick to slipping the bonds of Earth in something not squishy! Seriously glad all these folks are going to be okay.
Click to expand...

francisco collazos said:
I saw the video..why didn't they give it more gas??
Click to expand...

There's a significant delay in the time between you give it gas and the balloon changes its trajectory. I seem to recall it was something on the order of 5-10 seconds. I haven't seen the video (and even if I did, I'm essentially a pre-solo student when it comes to balloons), but in other words you can have a lot of time until you hit something and it might still be too late to do anything about it. And like any other aircraft, if you aren't careful you can fly into power lines.

We owned a hot air balloon for about a year and took a few lessons. Like any other form of flying you have to understand the limitations and work within them. I never felt unsafe in it and I did find it to be a really cool and unique form of flying. The perspective that comes with it is unlike any other.
 
It still doesn't seem like that is the mostly likely cause of the accident.
 
Hard to imagine losing a family member in an accident and then having them impugned incorrectly.
 
Everything I’ve seen still makes it seem a whole lot more likely that too many people jumped at the same time. Not the pilot’s fault if true.
 
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