Yes, standard pilot training includes the information that winds change direction several degrees in the first thousand feet or more, so there’s a certain amount of directional control.
In Egypt, the fields are very narrow - only a few miles from each side of the river, if that - so crops are valuable… plus, this guy knew his wind patterns and had done this flight regularly - he put us down where the crew truck was already waiting.
When I was a kid growing up in Des Moines, we would make an annual trip to Indianola, about 15 miles south, for the hot air balloon convention that has since been relocated to Albuquerque. There would be certain farms that the balloon pilots were not allowed to land on unless there was an emergency. And like md2000 said, they were very respectful of crops.
I’ve heard that Indianola does host a smaller festival nowadays.
Did it once, would never do it, again.
Pilots typically avoid landing on crops & the pilot or crew will ask for landowner permission either right before or after landing. Most people love us to land on their property. However, if someone doesn’t want us landing there, there is a electronic ‘red zone’ map of places that we can’t land that we’ll add that property to. Since most people are flying with some sort of GPS device, we can see if we’re approaching/over a red zone in real time & won’t land there. We also try & fly at least 500’ & use the whisper burner (a less powerful, but quieter burner) when over any livestock/horse/poultry.
I also want to point out that the pilot in command of an aircraft, ANY aircraft including balloons, is legally responsible for any damage incurred during or after a flight. If a balloonist lands on a crop he can be held financially responsible for any damage done to that crop by the balloon, his crew or his passengers. (Or her, if the PIC is female, of course.)
When I had to make an emergency landing on a farm field one of the things brought up in my “talk” with the FAA the next day was whether or not I owed the owner of the property for any damages I might have incurred. As it happened, no damages, but if there had been it would have come out of my pocket.
I am not sure how I feel about that. I presume it was land or die. The guy’s crops would be damaged. Can you carry insurance for that sort of thing?
No GPS back in the 1970s!
It’s not going to be a large amount of money. An acre of cropland is only going to have a few hundred dollars worth of crop.
Well, pretty close to no noise at all when the burner is off - and the passengers shut up. (I suppose the pilot light makes a tiny amount of noise.)
When it’s on, you can converse only by shouting, and animals in a field hundreds of feet below may be panicked. That’s one reason farmers may not like balloons.
I came across another: a farmer in the Scott Valley (northern CA) grows top-quality hay which he sells (no doubt for fancy prices) to rich and fussy horse owners. A balloon landed in one of his fields and the next year he had to deal with troublesome weeds spreading from the landing spot. He attributed this to seeds the basket had collected in previous landings elsewhere.
I’ve heard it claimed that the balloonist’s tradition of carrying a bottle of champagne is for the purpose of mollifying potentially irate landowners. Not sure if this is true, or simply a good story.
The hayfield I landed in had been mowed a few days before, what was left was to be plowed under in the near future. An emergency landing is not necessarially a completely random, out of control event, I had the ability to avoid objects on the ground like his house and the fenceline. Given a preference, I’d take a mowed field over one with, say, standing corn. Imagine a corn cob hitting the windshield of your car at 70 mph. Imagine a LOT of corncobs hitting your car at 70 mph. Mowed hay is a lot less hazardous. It was an emergency, not a crash. I have some self-interest in causing minimum damage on the ground because that minimizes damage to my own self as well.
And yes, a pilot can carry liability insurance. Quite a few of them do.
It’s the property owner’s option to pursue damages or not. I’ve had friends who landed on private property in emergencies and if it’s just a few ruts in the turf or a damaged shed it’s not unheard of for the property owner to say “nevermind” - although sometimes the property owner’s insurance company will come after the pilot later, if, for example, the property owner made a claim on their homeowner’s insurance (or the pilot’s estate, if things really went pear-shaped). I’ve had a couple friends wind up in trees - in one case emergency services got him down without cost to him, in another the pilot had to work out a payment plan.
Then there are state and local laws to consider. In Illinois, for example, I am told it is illegal to land an airplane anywhere but an airport except in an emergency. So if my little incident had been deemed to NOT be an actual emergency I would have had to deal with that issue. The outcome of that could have been anything from a warning to a hefty fine.
There are emergency landings which are done early enough to prevent out-of-control crashes and those are usually preferable to the alternative and cause much less damage. You don’t want to too strongly discourage pilots from landing BEFORE death and destruction become inevitable. And there there are just horrific accidents where no one is in control of where the aircraft lands, and those can be extremely destructive.
Oh, the humanity!
Come on, people…
My sister was in a balloon group that went to Indianola in the '80s. On one flight they had the choice of landing in soybeans or in a cornfield. The corn was mature (i.e., tall) but soybeans were bringing more money, so they landed in the cornfield and rolled up the bag as it lay overhead on the cornstalks.
What happens if the landowner denies permission after landing?
Not sure where you got the idea that the Indianola balloon fiesta moved to Albuquerque, but it is not correct. The Albuquerque balloon fiesta began as a celebration of a radio stations 50th anniversary in 1972. The radio station was 770 KOB. The station asked a guy named Sid Cutter if they could use Cutters balloon. From there the discussion went to what the largest gathering of balloons had been, which up to that time had been 19. For the first fiesta they invited 21 balloonists but only 13 made it.
I was there though I was very young.
Slee
Take off & look for somewhere else to land; however, this is the exception rather than the norm. Most people love it, a few will be well you’re here but please don’t do it again. It’s pretty rare to have someone say no way.
I might be the “no way” guy. Especially if you have to drive your truck through my land, maybe crops, and disrupt whatever I have going on to retrieve your balloon. What gets me is the presumptuousness of going up and knowing that you’ll land on someone’s property without permission, and that there’s a decent chance you could do some damage.
Now if a small airplane or a helicopter crash landed on my property, I wouldn’t have any complaint. They went up with the intention of landing somewhere appropriate and just had an emergency.
Curmudgeonly maybe, but I like people to ask permission before they intrude.
I don’t think any of these guys are going up with the intent to piss people off.
As mentioned up thread, especially these days they have maps marked with the areas the owners don’t want them to go. They are not totally without control.
Certainly, if they KNOW you don’t want them there they’ll do their best to avoid you.
A common technique to mitigate this problem is to descend to an altitude of 15 ft or so and toss a rope to ground crew, who then walk the balloon to a location where retrieve impact is minimal.
This works when the wind at ground level is low - meaningful wind strongly constrains the ability to move a balloon.
I can’t speak for every balloonist, but we don’t drive on property w/o permission, we don’t lay it out & pack it up in crops. Many/most fields have a vehicle-wide space at the edge where the farmer drives his equipment down; this is where we’ll drive (after getting permission). I have never seen someone do donuts thru the middle of the field, as you’re kind of implying. We will offer to pay for crop/property damage. As Xema said, the balloon can be ‘towed’ to the end of a field &/or broken down & carried out piece by piece.
Every balloonist that I know of knows that we rely on the kindness of property owners to allow up permission to land on their property. If we abuse that, then we lose permission; if that happens enough, we lose the ability to fly.
We ask permission as soon as we can; however, we don’t know if the balloon will be over a given property until just a few minutes (at most) before it’s over said given property.