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August 26, 2007

NFTGJ: Gondola with the Wind...

 

 

We all know about the hot air balloon tragedy a few days ago (watch report). But how safe are they?

 

Without doing much work, I was able to find two videos each showing multiple balloon catastrophes with horrifying consequences (note: these videos were posted on YouTube by other users and the music is a little crass):

 

 

Some clips show balloons snagging on 200 ft towers at best forcing their occupants (at times children) to climb down, at worst being torn from the gondola, which then free-falls to the ground. Other clips show the entire gondola exploding in a fiery ball, others seemingly dropping out of the sky for no apparent reason.

 

 

I’m sure if I cared to study the frequency of such accidents closely, it would probably show that only a handful of these things happen annually, leaving scores of thousands of other flights completely uneventful. However, since one of my chosen ways to go isn’t to randomly drop out of the sky or drop out of the sky and be on fire, I think I’ll be steering clear of hopping on one of these any time soon.

 

Posted by Martin at August 26, 2007 04:23 PM

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