A Hot Air Balloon passenger's emergency guide

 

If You Have to Land the Balloon Yourself

A passenger's emergency guide — for a Temecula flight, when the pilot is down and you are the person closest to the burner.

By Stephen "Pseudo Publius"

This is a realistic what-to-do-if essay, not a flight manual and not a substitute for FAA training. Nobody reading this is qualified to fly a balloon. The goal of this writing is to keep you alive long enough for a trained person on the ground to help you — and to prevent the worst common mistakes a frightened passenger would otherwise make. If the pilot is incapacitated, your first priority is the cell phone, not the burner. Read on.

First: Breathe. The Balloon Is Not Falling.

If the pilot has just collapsed, or fallen, or is otherwise not flying the craft, the most important thing to understand in the first five seconds is this: the balloon is not going to plummet. A hot air balloon without a pilot is still a balloon. The envelope above you is full of hot air, and hot air cools slowly. With no one touching the burner at all, you have roughly three to eight minutes of useful altitude before the craft descends on its own to the ground — and that descent, if you do nothing, will be gentle for most of it and only become firm in the last few seconds.

You are not in a plane that has lost its engine. You are in a craft that is going to land itself relatively soon no matter what you do. Your job is to make that landing happen over grass and not over a freeway, a swimming pool, or a power line.

In the first 30 seconds, do these things in this order:

1. If the pilot is still in the basket, pull them away from the burner frame so they don't get burned by residual heat from the pilot lights.
2. Tell the other passengers, loudly and clearly: "Everybody stay in the basket. Do not try to climb out. Hold the interior ropes or handles. I am going to land us." Passengers jumping out of a moving basket is how people die.
3. Get your cell phone out and call 911.

The Phone Call Is Your Most Important Control

You have a cell phone. In Temecula wine country, you almost certainly have coverage — the valley is surrounded by cell sites serving the Pechanga casino, the wineries, and the residential neighborhoods. Dial 911 immediately. When the Riverside County dispatcher answers, say this, as calmly as you can:

"I'm a passenger in a hot air balloon near Temecula. Our pilot is unconscious [or: has fallen out]. There are [N] passengers on board, no injuries yet. We need an air traffic controller on the phone and we need fire and medical at our landing site. Our current GPS position is—"

Then open your phone's compass/maps app with one hand and read them your latitude and longitude. On an iPhone, the Compass app shows coordinates at the bottom. On Android, Google Maps shows coordinates if you long-press your blue dot. If you can't find coordinates, describe what you see below you: "I can see the Pechanga casino to the south and Lake Skinner to the east," or "I'm over vineyards, I can read the sign on one of them, it says Wilson Creek."

Dispatchers in Riverside County know that balloons fly every morning. They will take you seriously. Ask them to stay on the line. Ask them to connect you, or to get a message to, the balloon operator — the company name is on your waiver, on your wristband, or painted on the side of the basket above you. In Temecula the operators are names like Magical Adventure, California Dreamin', Grape Escape, Cielo, Compass, and a few others. Any of them will have a pilot on a cell phone within 90 seconds who can talk you through what follows. That pilot, on the phone, is your real copilot now. Everything in this guide is stopgap advice until you have that person.

Put the phone on speaker and wedge it somewhere secure. A basket pocket, a corner, your shirt pocket, zipped into a jacket. Do not hold it in your hand. You are going to need both hands.

Understand What You Are Standing Next To

Above your head is an envelope the size of a small house, full of air at about 100 degrees Celsius. In front of you, attached to the basket by aluminum uprights, is a burner frame. On that frame are two or three burners that look like metal cylinders with nozzles aimed straight up into the mouth of the envelope. The burners have two kinds of valves — usually color-coded or labeled:

• A main blast valve (typically a red handle or lever). This is the big burner. Squeezing or pulling this valve produces a loud roar and a long blue flame six to ten feet tall. This is how you make the balloon go up, or stop it from going down.
• A whisper burner valve (often yellow or a different handle shape). This makes a quieter orange flame. It does roughly the same job as the blast valve but more gently. If you have time and you are close enough to read it, use this one.

Somewhere above you, running down from the top of the envelope into the basket, is a colored rope — usually red — called the vent line or parachute line. Pulling this rope opens a vent in the top of the envelope and lets hot air escape. This is how you make the balloon go down faster. Almost certainly, you should not touch this rope until you are at the very end of the landing, and even then only briefly. A passenger who pulls the vent line at altitude can turn a gentle descent into a hard one.

The single rule that matters most: If you are not sure whether to burn or to vent, burn. Burning adds time and altitude. Venting removes both. Extra time is what saves you. A balloon that is too high lands later; a balloon that is too low lands sooner, and "sooner" might be on top of something you don't want to land on.

Look Down. Pick Your Field.

You are drifting. Look over the side of the basket, in the direction of drift (the wind on your face tells you nothing — there is no wind in a balloon, because the balloon moves with the air). To find your drift direction, look straight down and watch the ground move. The direction the ground appears to slide underneath you is the opposite of the direction you are drifting. If the ground is sliding toward the south under you, you are drifting north.

Now identify, in the next 30 seconds, a landing site. You are looking for the following, roughly in this priority order:

1. An open field. A vineyard is acceptable. A pasture is excellent. A dry lakebed or a grassy park is ideal. The Temecula Valley is full of these — the vineyards around De Portola Road, the fields near Lake Skinner, the open land south of Rancho California Road. You need roughly a football field of open space (about 100 yards by 50 yards) with no obstacles on the upwind side.
2. A road or a driveway, next to the field. The fire truck and the chase vehicle need to reach you.
3. No power lines on your approach path. This is the one thing that will kill you. Find them before they find you. (More on this in a moment.)
4. No trees directly upwind. You don't want the envelope dragging through oak branches as you come down.
5. No houses, pools, or roads directly underneath your chosen touchdown point.

You do not need a perfect site. You need a survivable one. If the only open space within reach is a vineyard, land in the vineyard — the grapevines will cushion the basket and the landowner will understand. If the only open space is a Little League outfield, land there. Grape Escape, California Dreamin', and Magical Adventure land in outfields and vineyards routinely.

The Power Lines

Power lines are the single deadliest hazard in ballooning. The 2016 Lockhart, Texas, crash that killed 16 people was a power-line strike. Power lines are hard to see from above because the wires themselves are thin gray strands against a gray-and-green landscape. What you can see are the poles. Look for lines of wooden or metal poles spaced 100 to 300 feet apart, running along roads and property lines.

If you see poles, assume the wires between them. Any two poles in a line have wires between them. Those wires will be invisible from above but unforgiving on contact. Do not descend through a line of poles under any circumstances. Fly over them with at least 100 feet of clearance if you can, or change course by changing altitude.

If your drift is carrying you toward a power line and you are at, say, 500 feet above it, burn. A long 5- to 10-second burn. Count "one thousand one, one thousand two…" aloud. The balloon will not climb immediately — hot air balloons have a response delay of 20 to 40 seconds. Do not panic at the delay. Do not burn more because you don't see an immediate response. Wait. Watch the altitude. Watch the power line's apparent position below you. If the line is still growing closer after 30 seconds, give another 5-second burn.

Climbing may also put you into a different wind layer — one that is blowing in a different direction. This might take you away from the power line corridor entirely. This is how balloon pilots steer: they change altitude to catch different winds. You don't need to plan this perfectly. You just need to get higher and see what happens.

The Woods

Trees are the second hazard. A balloon dragged through mature oaks or eucalyptus will tear, tip, and dump the basket. But trees are easier to see than power lines, and the rule is simple: do not land in trees; land short of them or past them. If a stand of trees is between you and your chosen field, you have two options:

1. Burn and fly over them. Give yourself 100 feet of vertical clearance above the tallest tree. Remember the response delay — start burning when the trees are still half a mile away, not when they are 200 feet away.
2. Change altitude to catch a different wind direction that takes you around them. Try climbing first. If you have time, try descending (only a little — 100 to 200 feet — and only by letting the balloon cool, not by pulling the vent).

If you find yourself committed to a tree line and cannot clear it, aim for the part with the shortest trees, burn hard to maximize your clearance, and brace. The passengers should already be in landing position (see below). A balloon that catches the tops of 40-foot trees at low speed will usually settle into them and deflate without throwing people out.

Setting Up the Descent

You have picked a field. You are drifting toward it. The balloon, left alone, is already descending gradually. Your job now is to manage that descent so that you touch down inside the field and not short of it, and not past it.

Think of it this way: the balloon is a car rolling downhill with no brakes, but you can pump the gas pedal. The "gas pedal" is the burner. Every time you burn, you add altitude and delay the landing. Every time you don't burn, you lose altitude and arrive sooner.

The descent procedure:

1. When your chosen field is roughly half a mile ahead along your drift line, stop any burning. Let the balloon cool on its own.
2. Watch the altitude. A modern ride basket has an altimeter on the burner frame or on a small instrument panel. If you can read it, you are looking for a descent rate of roughly 200 to 400 feet per minute. If you can't read an instrument, estimate: the ground getting noticeably closer over 15 seconds is about right; the ground rushing up in 5 seconds is too fast.
3. If the descent is building faster than that, give a short burn — 2 to 3 seconds — to slow it. Count the burn aloud.
4. As you approach 300 feet above the ground, give another 2- to 3-second burn. This won't stop the descent; it will just soften it.
5. At 100 feet above the ground, give one more 2-second burn. Then let the balloon come in.

Brace the Passengers

Before the basket gets within 100 feet of the ground — ideally earlier, while you still have altitude and time — give everyone the landing briefing. Do it loudly:

Everyone: knees bent. Face the direction of travel — the direction the ground is sliding away from underneath us. Both hands on the interior handles or ropes, not on the top edge of the basket. Do not reach outside the basket. Do not try to climb out when we touch. The basket may tip over on its side. Stay inside it until it stops moving. Then wait for me to say "out."

Repeat the briefing. Passengers in shock forget things immediately.

The reason these rules exist: a basket touching down on grass at 5 to 10 miles per hour of drift will usually bounce once, skid 20 to 50 feet, and then tip onto its side as the envelope collapses ahead of it. People who stay inside the wicker walls with their knees bent almost always walk away. People who jump out at the last moment, or who grab the outside of the basket with their hands, get their ankles broken or their fingers crushed.

The Touchdown

In the last 50 feet, stop thinking about steering. There is nothing left to steer. Hold the burner valve ready but do not burn unless the descent is genuinely hard. Let the craft settle. When the basket contacts the ground, it will bounce. Do not release anything. Do not pull the vent line. Do not shout.

The basket will drag. This is normal. Drag distances of 30 to 100 feet are typical in any wind at all. The basket will then tip — usually forward, in the direction of drift — and the envelope ahead of you will collapse across the ground. Passengers on the leading side of the basket (the side facing the drift direction) will end up lower than passengers on the trailing side. Everyone stays put.

Once the basket has fully stopped moving and the envelope is settling, now you can act. Find the vent line — the red rope — and pull it hard, all the way, to dump the remaining hot air out of the top of the envelope. This prevents the balloon from reinflating and dragging you again in a gust. Keep pulling until the envelope is obviously deflated on the ground.

After You Are Down

1. Check on the pilot first. Begin CPR if trained and if the pilot has no pulse. Tell 911 on your still-connected phone that you are down, give them your location from the Compass/Maps app, and ask them to vector medical to you.
2. Check the passengers. Ankle and wrist injuries are the most common. Do not move anyone who complains of back or neck pain; let the paramedics come to them.
3. Get everyone out of the basket carefully, one at a time, on the high side. Do not let anyone walk onto the envelope fabric — it is slippery and still contains hot air pockets.
4. Move away from the burner. The pilot lights are still lit. There are still 30 to 60 gallons of liquid propane in the tanks. Find the main fuel shutoff valves on top of each propane tank (round black knobs) and turn them clockwise until they stop. The pilot lights will go out within a minute.
5. Stay at the landing site. Do not wander to find help. Help is coming to you. The chase crew, which has been tracking the balloon by road from the moment it launched, will reach you within 10 to 20 minutes. Fire and EMS will reach you from wherever dispatch sent them.

Getting Back

You will not need to arrange your own transportation. Every commercial balloon operator in Temecula runs a chase vehicle — a van or SUV with a trailer — whose sole job is to follow the balloon from launch to landing and bring passengers, pilot, crew, and deflated balloon back to the launch point. In a normal flight they arrive within minutes of touchdown. In the emergency you just handled, they will already be converging on your GPS coordinates, and so will a second crew from whichever company took your 911 call.

If for any reason no company vehicle arrives within 20 minutes and EMS has already transported any injured passengers, your phone will do the rest. Uber and Lyft both operate across the Temecula Valley; so do Pechanga casino taxis. The Meadows Village Shopping Center at 31963 Rancho California Road, where several balloon operators meet their passengers, is a known pickup point. You will be fine.

A Short Word at the End

Most of what is written above you will never have to use. Balloon flights over Temecula operate with safety records the FAA considers excellent; pilot incapacitation in flight is extraordinarily rare; every commercial operator in the valley carries backup communications and crew support for exactly this kind of contingency. The advice in this essay is not the plan. The plan is that the pilot flies the balloon and the chase crew picks you up for a champagne toast forty minutes later.

But on the morning that the plan does not hold, and you find yourself the passenger closest to the burner with a phone in your pocket and a valley full of vineyards below you, remember this: the balloon will land. You cannot prevent that, and you do not need to. You only need to aim it.

Aim for the open field. Stay away from the lines. Keep the phone on speaker. Listen to the real pilot on the other end. Burn when in doubt. Brace the passengers. Pull the vent line only after you have stopped moving. And breathe.

The valley will take care of the rest.