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Edition 09 - 20 March 1999
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# Balloonists Complete World Trip #

20 March 1999

By CLARE NULLIS Associated Press Writer 

GENEVA (AP) - A Swiss doctor and British pilot, riding friendly winds
and their own dogged spirit, today crossed an invisible line on
Africa's map and drifted on into immortality, the first to realize
man's century-old dream of circling the world in that fickle, fragile
craft called a hot-air balloon.

After 19 days aloft, Bertrand Piccard, Brian Jones and their silvery
Breitling Orbiter 3 floated past longitude 9 degrees west at 4:54 EST
to complete the 26,500-mile, nonstop circumnavigation, a feat that had
challenged and eluded dozens of balloonists before them.

Triumphant but weary, the record-making duo sped on toward a landing
probably early Sunday in Egypt.

For all the dangers and difficulties of long-distance ballooning, the
historic voyage was relatively uneventful for Piccard, 41, grandson
and son of famed explorers of the air and sea, and Jones, a
51-year-old balloon instructor and grandfather.

They lifted off among the snowy Swiss Alps on March 1, drifted down to
the sands of North Africa, caught a jet stream and headed on across
the Arabian Desert, over India and on to the lush green of southeast
Asia.

The treacherous Pacific Ocean crossing proved relatively smooth,
accomplished in six days. East of Central America, seven miles high,
they were trapped in a lazy spiral and developed temporary breathing
problems in the deeply frigid air. But the 180-foot-high balloon soon
caught a favorable jet stream that propelled them on their last leg,
at 90 mph, across the Atlantic.

Since U.S. publisher James Gordon Bennett established a trophy for
long-distance ballooning in 1906, sportsmen have striven to fly the
farthest, eventually setting their sights on a round-the-world flight.
Americans Maxie Anderson and Don Ida made the first attempt, in 1981,
but flew only 2,676 miles, from Egypt to India.

This was Piccard's third attempt to complete the adventure. Last year
he was forced to ditch in Myanmar, also known as Burma, after his
balloon was refused permission to cross China. This year the team
delayed a decision until the Empire of the Middle agreed to let the
balloon overfly its southern region.

There was celebration in the Breitling Orbiter makeshift control room
at Geneva airport, where a team of flight controllers, meteorologists
and technicians has been following the balloon's progress 24 hours a
day.

Piccard's wife Michele and their three small daughters set off to
Africa for a reunion with her husband, while Jones' wife Joanna
decided to remain in Geneva.

Chief meteorologist Luc Trullemans said the balloon had more than
enough fuel to make it to Egypt.

``They've got two bottles of fuel left. We don't need a whole day's
flying any more, but we need to conserve some fuel because the landing
may be difficult,'' said Trullemans.

In a conversation with air traffic control in Dakar, Senegal, early
today, Piccard was asked whether he was going to Nouakchott, the
capital of Mauritania, or to Mali.

``Negative. We do not land. We go to Egypt. We are a balloon flying
around the world,'' Piccard replied. 

Yahoo! News AP Headlines  


# Balloonist Sought Higher Cause #

20 March 1999

In the mid-1980s, businessman Brian Jones was offered a balloon ride
during a festival in his home town of Bristol, in southwest England.
It changed his life.

Jones was so taken by the experience that he bought his own balloon -
and learned to fly it. He handed his crockery and catering equipment
business to his sister and decided to make a living from balloons.

``It was at that time that ballooning became more commercial. There
were advertising balloons, and people were having rides in hot-air
balloons, and it was apparent that there was a business to be made,''
said his wife Joanna, who went into business with her husband in 1990,
the same year that the couple married.

Jones was no stranger to the air, having spent 13 years in the Royal
Air Force and working as a gliding instructor.

He became a balloon instructor and training officer for the British
Balloon and Airship Club and an examiner. Before the start of his
round-the-world flight, he had already clocked up more than 5,000
hours of flying time, including 1,200 in balloons.

He became involved with the Breitling team during their second attempt
to fly around the world in early 1998.

Jones, who will be 52 on March 27, was initially the back-up pilot and
took part in all the training with pilot Bertrand Piccard and his
teammate Tony Brown. When Brown withdrew in November 1998 over
differences ``in the area of crew resource management,'' Jones was
given the second spot in the balloon.

Mrs. Jones said she had never been worried about her husband and
Piccard clashing during their arduous, stressful voyage.

``Brian is an extraordinarily quiet, gentle person, although he has a
strong character, and I don't know anybody who couldn't get on with
him,'' she said. ``He is very easy and very likable.'' 

Yahoo! News AP Headlines  


# Balloonist's Flown Since Childhood #

20 March 1999

It seems an unlikely thing for a physician specializing in psychiatry
to want to do, spend three weeks in a balloon miles up in the air, but
Bertrand Piccard has been flying almost any way he can since he was a
child.

Brought up among the most elite flyers of all - the astronauts at the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States -
Piccard always seemed to have a yen to get off the ground. He also is
a champion hang-glider and an ultra-light pilot.

A sense of adventure is ingrained in his family, which has always
sought to push the boundaries of endurance and experience.

``My father was the deepest man in the ocean, my grandfather was the
first man in the stratosphere. During my childhood, I have seen a lot
of adventurers, and this gave me the wish to explore something on this
beautiful earth,'' Piccard told The Associated Press before his first
attempt to fly around the world two years ago.

Piccard, who celebrated his 41st birthday on March 1 - the day he and
partner Brian Jones took off in their round-the-world balloon from
Chateau d'Oex in the Swiss Alps - was a champion balloonist even
before he started out to fly around the world.

Along with Wim Verstraeten, a fellow crew-member on the previous
Breitling Orbiter balloons, he won the Chrysler Challenge, the first
ever transatlantic balloon race, in 1992. The pair flew 2,580 miles
from Maine to Portugal.

His father Jacques said he had always been confident his son was doing
everything right as he worked to achieve the record, although many
things were beyond the control of the pilots.

``I helped him as much as I could. I always asked him if he was sure
of problems and if things had been studied, and he always had good and
positive answers,'' he said. ``You can always be confident of the
machine, but when you are depending on the winds 100 percent, anything
can happen.'' 

Yahoo! News AP Headlines  


# Balloonists Following Tradition #

20 March 1999

By NAOMI KOPPEL Associated Press Writer 

GENEVA (AP) - Doing things nobody has ever done before comes naturally
to the Piccard family.

Balloonist Bertrand Piccard today became the first to go round the
world nonstop in a balloon, following an adventuring tradition that
began in 1931 when his physicist grandfather Auguste became the first
man ever to take a balloon into the stratosphere, rising to 51,762
feet. Three years later, Auguste's twin brother, Jean-Felix, went even
higher - to 11 miles - in a stratosphere ascent in the United States.

Auguste then set about creating a super submarine he called a
``bathyscaphe,'' from the Greek for ``deep boat,'' which would allow
people to explore the depths of the seas.

In 1960, Auguste's son, Jacques, took a bathyscaphe based on his
father's design to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific -
the world's deepest ocean depth. Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lt. Don
Walsh, who was also aboard, went down to nearly seven miles below sea
level.

Now 76, Jacques Piccard is still working from his oceanography
laboratory beside Lake Geneva. He plans to take more than 600 high
school students out in submarines this year and is also working on an
underwater study of the lake.

He is modest about his own achievements compared with those of his
father and son.

``My father was a real pioneer,'' he told The Associated Press. ``He
was a scientist, and he invented the bathyscaphe. I was just using it.
I built some submersibles after that, but all my knowledge in this
field came from my father.''

Jacques Piccard says his 41-year-old son is a different case because
his ballooning was a way to find a diversion from the stresses of
work.

``He had to get a little bit away from his normal work. But it was not
so different finally because, as a psychiatrist, one of his purposes
was to study the contacts between two people in a closed
environment.''

Some of the ideas used by Auguste Piccard in his early flights - such
as the notion of only partially inflating the balloon at takeoff to
allow for expansion of the gases at higher altitudes and the use of an
airtight capsule - have been used by Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones,
a 51-year-old Briton, in their flight.

The team has also drawn on Jacques' experiences of traveling in the
waters of the Gulf Stream to work out how best to use the jet stream
to speed the balloon around the world.

``There are so many common points between our expeditions,'' Jacques
Piccard said.

In his youth, Bertrand Piccard lived in the United States when his
father was working for the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, and his father said he was inspired by meeting many
astronauts.

``He was always tempted to do something like this,'' he said. ``When
he likes something, when he wants to do something, he is very careful,
very competent and very patient. I believe the patience is one common
point between my father, myself and him.''

He said he thought his son was looking forward to getting back to
normal now.

``He will return to his medical office, and he will find his patients
and be very glad to start his work again,'' he said. ``But I am sure
he will be different. When you achieve something like this, it is
something that remains with you forever.'' 

Yahoo! News AP Headlines

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