They did not even print the “Certificate” with pilot’s signature - they sent an email with a link so the customer could print it out - using the customer’s printer, ink, and paper.
They also refuse refunds for any reason - once hey have your money, they keep it.
All that tells me they would hate to have 16 paying customers ($399 each) and then have to scrub a flight.
The old rule with pilots and many others:
“Hell, I’ve done stupider things and survived!”.
Until you try to sneak in just one more flight under the clouds…
The NTSB Aviation Investigation database is full of “done dumber things” taken one time too many.
Next time you hear of a Pop Star dying in a small plane, the odds are real good that the pilot knew better, but could not pass up the money/fame.
Balloon flights get “scrubbed” all the time. The pilot will monitor the weather, and if conditions aren’t favorable, reschedule the flight. It’s not like an airline where you purchase a ticket for “Saturday, 7:00 AM” and if you miss your flight, you’re SOL. The last time I flew on a commercial flight, our flight was rescheduled 4 times before we actually flew. Several times I’ve gotten up early to go crew, only to get a “flight cancelled” text from the pilot. That’s just part of ballooning.
Well, something similar happend a couple of years ago around here
If TL;TR, 32 passengers, wind shear, 6 burned alive. Other crippled while jumped out.
My good friend was on that balloon. He has BA from geography and in fact tried to talk out the pilot from that voyage, as he saw cold front approached sooner that expected. He survived, but his parents didn’t.
These were transmission lines. 10,000 volts ? judging from the size of the insulators on the poles… around there, 10kV or 30 kV ?
The fire occurred low to the ground, they weren’t really talk poles… I’d say that some would survive the fall from that height… if it was only the gas leak on fire or gondola on fire…
You don’t have to actually touch transmission lines… Just provide conduction so that the spark distance is reduced… to spark range… if you were in a dire emergency, and had to go close to them, you really must stay as the wires separation away from any individual wire… that is, if the transmission wires are 3 metres apart, stay 3 metres from any wire. There are people who go closer and survive, but like, it various with the design of the tower and so on…
Well when the spark does happen, the air becomes ionised, and conducts well, and the metal that shorted the gap also becomes so hot it boils… the cloud of boiling metal continues to conduct … it becomes a plasma… The electrons leave then nucleus… and flow to one end, and nucleii to the other end, and thats when the plasma cloud ceases to conduct… Well its quite a hot cloud of gas by that stage, and the occupants of the gondala would have surely asphyxiated from having burnt their airways, if they survived long enough to asphyxiate.
Many businesses have an umbrella policy designed for just this situation. So, they’re current policy might only pay out like you stated, but the umbrella might then kick in with another, say, 10 million dollars to cover everything else.
I have a personal one as well. An interesting thing about them is that they can almost be a small liability, at least the way one agent explained it to me. From his view point, you could cause an accident which (the victims) max out your insurance and they’re ‘happy’ with that settlement. OTOH, if they see that you have an umbrella, they, or a lawyer, might decide to sue you for more for no reason other than that they know the money is there. Deep pockets and all that.
I have seen court cases where the amount being paid to the victim is still being hammered out but the judge has capped it at a specific amount and it’ll be noted that it’s the maximum payout allowed by that person’s insurance policy.
I’ve never understood the attraction to hot air balloons. Let’s all climb in a wicker basket and crowd around a big propane tank with an open flame, then go up high with little to no control over where we go and where we land, and there’s a promise of near certain death if anything goes wrong. Wheee!
Well, some of us just like to get away from the planet for a bit.
The hot air balloon ride I took (which ended uneventfully) featured fire extinguishers in the basket we were all standing in. Could put out a small fire, but not a large one. Also pretty useless against a powerline.
It is a metaphor for life and living in the universe. Orbiting a flaming ball of death…surrounded by other balls of death…crowded into the one tiny place that is barely safe…on a pointless journey of which we cannot control…which in ends in death…
The only thing wrong in your quote is the word near.
I have some photos I took during a balloon ride in Luxor. They include pictures of the balloon that crashed and burned about a year later.
The baskets are wicker, or at least those were. They are huge - they could probably hold about 20 people, plus pilot and a 6 foot by 2-foot-diameter propane tank. From what they said, the Luxor balloon equipment appears to have failed and caught fire. I suppose if you have a giant propane tank spraying fire all over your wicker basket, you are toast, literally and figuratively. (In fact, at least two survived since the balloon was low and they fell out of the basket - but then it shot up and burned hundreds of feet up).
I found the result odd, since the whole setup I saw in our balloon was very professional; in fact, the first morning we did not fly due to haze. The balloon companies got direct feedback from Luxor airport telling them if they were allowed to fly. (And no fly, no money). During the landing, the pilot was amazing. He kept us gliding over the fields at about 5 feet high for a quarter mile until we reached the roadway, so we didn’t ruin anyone’s crop.
Balloons probably, once flying spend more than 80% of their time floating with no burner going. At that time, it’s amazing how peaceful and quiet they are.
Good for him. That’s another point that’s bugged me about hot air balloons – landing wherever you want or have to, whether the landowner wants you there or not. Seems pretty presumptuous and rude, especially if you do any damage.
Balloon pilots do have some control, more than you seem to credit them with. Granted, it’s the up and down they control but they learn to make use of winds, which can vary at different heights. Making use of those is what takes a lot of skill.
