The sudden death of Malibu local Grant Adamson last week has ignited newfound interest in the safety of hot air ballooning, and the circumstances of Adamson’s death in Switzerland are especially curious for experts in the field.
Adamson was killed in a hot air balloon accident in the Swiss state of Fribourg after a balloon carrying him and his family struck a high voltage power line during an attempted landing and crashed 165 feet to the ground. Sources on the ground in Switzerland told The Malibu Times those types of high-rising lines transmit extremely high doses of electricity, but it did not appear the hull of the balloon had caught fire.
Not much else is known about what caused the crash, including possible wind conditions or if the pilot was at fault. Grant Adamson’s wife Terry and daughters Megan and Lauren were also injured in the crash. They are expected to fully recover from their injuries.
Mike Bauwens is a hot air balloon pilot instructor based out of Park City, Utah, with 37 years of experience in mountainous areas, including Switzerland. Bauwens said navigating a balloon in a scenic area like the Swiss Alps takes diligent planning and skill, but that hitting a power line seems out of the ordinary.
“Quite often there will be obstacles in some of the best landing areas, that’s not unusual. But balloons have incredible vertical control. It’s extremely rare for a balloon to hit a power line or some other obstacle,” Bauwens said in a telephone interview Monday.
Bauwens said he has experience flying in the area where the balloon carrying the Adamsons went down. From what has been described in media reports, he believes it is unlikely the power line collision cut the cables connecting the balloon to the passenger gondola.
“If a balloon comes in contact with power lines or a guy wire and it severs the [balloon] cables, usually you free fall from there. I don’t think that happened, no one would have survived,” Bauwens said. “What’s more likely is the envelope hit something somewhere and tore the hole in the balloon. Typically a big balloon, it keeps air and lets you come down kind of like a parachute.”
Focus on the pilot
Christian Dupuy, 65, has been identified as the pilot in the accident, which occurred toward the end of a nearly two-hour trip. According to a hotel media kit, Dupuy had worked as the in-house hot air balloon pilot since January 2010 at the Grand Hotel Park in Gstaad, Switzerland. He was injured in the crash as well but is expected to recover. The media kit, which appears to have been written in December 2010, states that Dupuy had recorded 110 hours of flight time as of the writing.
“An experienced pilot flying in the mountains is very well aware of the physics of air flow [through] the mountains, so while Mother Nature can always throw a surprise, the pilot is anticipating wind shifts at key areas when descending from the upper levels down to the valley,” Bauwens said.
The pilot’s experience should not have been a factor, Bauwens said.
“He’s flown in that area for three years, which is good,” he added. “Sometimes if it’s a new area maybe the pilot doesn’t see or notice an obstacle.”
Mountain view flights in Switzerland differ from a typical mountain view flight in the U.S., according to Bauwens.
“Typically in the U.S., most of the passenger flights are—if they’re in the mountains— through the valleys between mountains,” he said. “In Europe, it’s been a longstanding tradition to fly above the peak level in the Alps and traverse many ridgetops in a flight.
“In the Alps themselves, every valley has nice open areas even though the valleys are very narrow and the pilots quite often get above the peak level and travel for an hour or more above the peak level.”
Pilots usually gauge conditions while in the air and “make a choice” on where to land based on wind speed, Bauwens added.
Weather conditions
A Swiss reporter told The Malibu Times the weather had been warm in Switzerland the week of the crash, which can have an effect on a hot air balloon flight, according to Bauwens.
“Warm weather makes the balloon labor more to stay in the air, but it’s built to deal with reasonably high temperatures. It’s not like it’s all of a sudden a pilot is going to have no control…Typically in warmer temperatures it’s less stable, but it doesn’t mean it was unstable [when it crashed].”