Hot Air Ballon Accident

[Wisewr]

I remebered Keith B.'s avatar and thought I'd post this for him. Linky.

[Keith B]

These folks were lucky. From reports, the passenger that fell received a broken hip and maybe a dislocated shoulder. The pilot did go to the hospital to be checked out, but apparently had no injuries.

This is speculation, but from what I can gather the wind was a little faster than some pilots are used to flying in. There was a faster layer of wind just above the surface that causes a lifting effect on the curved balloon top (like the lift on an airplane wing). This pilot apparently made two mistakes:

1. She failed to deal with the wind shear and loss of lift when the balloon top cleared the shear layer.
2. The pilot got 'target fixation' and failed to keep adequate clearance from structures when dealing with wind shear.

Luckily it was not more serious or a fatality. Ballooning can be a dangerous sport if you don't take the proper precautions and safety measures (kinda like guns, eh?)

Albuquerque has some challenges when flying, like lots of balloons in the air at the same time (550+), higher elevations (5K ft MSL), higher winds than some pilots normally fly in, more building and congestion taking away landing spots, etc, etc. There is a lot of peer pressure for pilots who want to fly and see other pilots launching, but maybe their skills aren't quite what they need to be for conditions. Aeronautical decision making goes south and they make the wrong choice to fly and get in over their heads.

[jimlongley]

Keith, why did the balloon deflate that way after she lost her passenger? It didn't look like the top was popped to me, but of course I'm not a pilot, did she just not compensate for the sudden lift and hit the shear again? She was burning when she hit the tent, and after too, and I just wondered if she just over compensated and then overcompensated again. I didn't see any burn during the hard landing.

Did you fly at Plano this year? I was there, but not as crew for the first time in years, Home Depot sent me to do a presentation on Energy Star appliances.

A couple of years ago up in Hugo, Brian and I took a wild ride when the ground wind increased after we launched.

[Keith B]

Keith, why did the balloon deflate that way after she lost her passenger? It didn't look like the top was popped to me, but of course I'm not a pilot, did she just not compensate for the sudden lift and hit the shear again? She was burning when she hit the tent, and after too, and I just wondered if she just over compensated and then overcompensated again. I didn't see any burn during the hard landing.

Did you fly at Plano this year? I was there, but not as crew for the first time in years, Home Depot sent me to do a presentation on Energy Star appliances.

A couple of years ago up in Hugo, Brian and I took a wild ride when the ground wind increased after we launched.

The balloon she had has a 'spring top' and not a parachute. For those unfamiliar with balloons, there is a 10 - 15 foot hole in the top called a deflation port. Most current balloons have a piece of fabric (nylon) that looks like an old fashioned parachute. It is held in place temporarily with Velcro until the balloon is heated up and the pressure of the hot air holds it in place. There are multiple lines that run down to a common point and a rope/pulley system that allows the pilot to pull on it and pull the sides of the parachute pull away from the rest of the balloon and allow hot air to escape out of the top. Unless you let too much heat out, the parachute will re-seat itself when you release the rope and seal the hole over again.

Some older balloons (made up until around 2000) had heavier fabric tops in them that were held in place with spring-type clips. There was a smaller portion of the top that you could pull down to allow heat out. Once you were ready to deflate the system, you pulled real hard and unseated the springs and the top would come down. This type of top normally won't reset itself and hold tight against the top when pulled out. A good description of how a balloon works is here. There is a diagram showing the parachute valve on page 2.

As for this situation in ABQ, the pilot was just puffing the burner as she came over the tent, so was not adequately applying heat to climb and clear the tent (pilot error.) Once the passenger was ejected, the loss of ballast (weight) caused the balloon to rapidly ascend. She did what she should have and pulled out the spring top to bring it back down and get safely on the ground as fast as possible. She also shut off all fuel feeding the burners from the tanks, so if a fuel line did rupture on impact, there would not be raw propane spewing and a potential for a fire. While the descent was pretty fast and the landing hard (estimated about 800 ft a minute or about 9 MPH vertically),it will jar your teeth, but you will be on the ground and able to check on your passenger.

On Plano, I was the Weather Officer. I did the glow Friday and Saturday nights, and flew on Sunday. Here is a photo someone took of me skimming the pond at Oak Point Sunday afternoon http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnchrist ... 963859880/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. My balloon is the one in the water on the right. You can see the ripples from the one on the left that had just done their 'splash and dash'.

Wind is one of our biggest concerns. My first ride 20 years ago was a very fast flight (about 18 - 20 MPH) with a rapid decent into a very muddy field. Luckily the mud cushioned our impact, but the pilot spent about $20 at the car wash cleaning the basket.

Bottom line, while the pilot did error and hit the tent, she did everything right after that to get down and recover. She also wasn't the only one to impact an object yesterday; here is another video showing what a balloon basket will do to a windshield http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S117 ... ?cat=10113#" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[jimlongley]

Keith, thanks for the clarification, it just looked to me like she was burning trying to lift over the tent and kept right on after the spill.

That whole thing could have been so much nastier.

I had a GPS in my pocket when Brian and I "crashed" and know exactly where we lit and where we stopped. The GPS readings taken while the balloon was horizontal are real interesting. The thing I remember most is our two way radio popping up into the air during the first bounce, and just kind of floating in front of me while we were all weightless, and then gravity reappeared and the radio disappeared. I know where the bounce was because I carried the GPS back to where I found the radio.

[Wisewr]

That sounded like a good technical analysis of what happened. Thanks for ed-u-macting the rest of us.

Also, those are some very nice pictures of your ballon. Looks like someone was using a very high quality camera.

[Keith B]

That sounded like a good technical analysis of what happened. Thanks for ed-u-macting the rest of us.

Also, those are some very nice pictures of your ballon. Looks like someone was using a very high quality camera.

Not sure what he was shooting with, but those were actually taken and scanned from film acording to him.

[Keith B]

Keith, thanks for the clarification, it just looked to me like she was burning trying to lift over the tent and kept right on after the spill.

That whole thing could have been so much nastier.

I had a GPS in my pocket when Brian and I "crashed" and know exactly where we lit and where we stopped. The GPS readings taken while the balloon was horizontal are real interesting. The thing I remember most is our two way radio popping up into the air during the first bounce, and just kind of floating in front of me while we were all weightless, and then gravity reappeared and the radio disappeared. I know where the bounce was because I carried the GPS back to where I found the radio.

That is why I try to tie all my stuff in the basket. Haver seriously thought about tying myself and passengers in; especially when I had one get out before I was cool enough to stay on the ground. Luckily the crew had just arrived and quickly put weight on to keep me from taking off again!