It’s not every day that a hot-air balloon lands in a residential neighborhood, much less in someone’s backyard. In more than 20 years as founder and CEO of Magical Adventures Balloon Rides, Denni Barrett can’t recall that exact scenario ever taking place. That is, until Saturday morning, when it happened in Temecula, California.
The video is now viral several times over on social media, but here’s how the full-length version plays out on YouTube: A backyard security camera captures a basket with maybe 10 people gently bouncing on a patch of lawn, eventually settling next to a wooden gate. The view switches to a smartphone camera, which starts on the smiling passengers before panning up to reveal an enormous blue hot-air balloon, still fully inflated, reaching toward the heavens.
The backyard belongs to Hunter and Jenna Perrin, who seem like good sports and have been interviewed elsewhere. But after some quick sleuthing, WIRED was able to trace the balloon itself to Magical Adventures Balloon Rides. Barrett, whose company previously garnered headlines for offering couples the chance to join the “Mile High Club” in one of his inflatables, confirmed that the balloon was his and explained what the heck happened up there.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
WIRED: So … how does a balloon wind up in someone’s backyard?
Denni Barrett: The winds had gone to calm, all the way up to 3,000 feet. There was no movement out of the neighborhood for that balloon. It was “becalmed,” as we would call it.
Before the pilot ran out of fuel and would have to do something different, he landed in the backyard. The landowner was OK with it. We took the passengers off, we brought more fuel, and then we used drop lines to manually lift and float the balloon to the street, where it was deflated.
Got it. How long were they up there in that “becalmed” state before deciding they had to go down, the fuel’s getting to an unsafe place? How long do you linger up there?
Normally, our flights are about an hour. The pilot was stuck over that neighborhood for about 30 minutes past his hour flight. So about 30 minutes of being unable to move out of that neighborhood or even to a street corner or a park.
How did the pilot decide where to land? How much room does he have to maneuver in a situation like that, to go to a backyard versus a street or wherever else?
Well, in this case, we couldn’t even get the balloon to the street on either side of the neighborhood. That particular backyard was big enough for the basket to land without the balloon in danger of hitting the house. It was more of an opportunity to land safely before we didn’t have fuel to land. So that’s why it was that backyard in that location. The other options were less safe.
What’s the process of getting a balloon down safely from that height?
Well, it’s pretty simple. Hot air causes the balloon to rise. Let the balloon cool, or let some of the hot air out—we go down. The steerage comes from the wind. So we can control up and down very expertly, as you can see. But left and right, that’s entirely by the wind.
In this case, there was no wind for an extended period of time, and that’s why the pilot landed where he did.
Can I ask a dumb question, then? If you can’t control directionally where you’re going, how do you chart a course for balloon flights in the first place?
OK, sure. So balloons travel with the wind. We look at the forecast to know what the expected winds are. We use these very sophisticated pieces of instrumentation, called helium balloons, the morning of the flight, to see what the actual wind conditions are. Those helium balloons rise at a rate of 300 feet per minute, so by watching the balloon rising, with our stopwatch and a compass, we get an idea of what the actual winds are doing at launch time.
After that, we pick our launch site where we think we’ll be landing at the end of an hour. We reverse-engineer the entire flight. In this case, the wind conditions changed dramatically, and that’s how the pilot ended up above that neighborhood and not able to get to his intended landing spot.
And then our ground crew will follow the balloon with their chase vehicles to be there to help catch the balloon, manage the balloon, and pack it up, and bring it back to home base.
When you first got the report from the ground crew that said, ‘Hey, this balloon is stuck,’ what was your reaction in that moment?
I trust the pilot’s skills. So my reaction was the pilot did what was proper and correct, because the only other option is he could have kept flying low on fuel to the point where he didn’t have enough to control his landing. For him to land in that backyard without damaging any property or putting any of our passengers at risk was the right decision.
How often does this sort of thing happen, in your experience?
It’s rare. It’s very rare.
Did anybody ask for a refund? I feel obligated to ask.
Just the opposite. They want to go back and fly with that same pilot again. They thought he was very safe and explained what was happening and why it was happening. Everybody wanted to do it again.
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