Weather Causes Course Change for Record-Seeking Balloon Pilots
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Tsuyoshi Ogushi/Two Eagles Balloon Team(NEW YORK) — On Thursday afternoon, the pilots aboard a gas balloon seeking to set records for distance and duration traveled while crossing the Pacific changed their strategy and their course by deciding to fly over Baja, Mexico, instead of Vancouver, Canada.
Pilots Leonid Tiukhtyaev and Troy Bradley remain on pace to set both of the records they targeted, but shifted course due to “changes in the weather pattern,” a release said. The new course had been an option earlier, but was rejected due to concerns about storms in the area.
The release says that had they taken the southern route initially, they would have run into difficult weather. Now, however, after having taken a “detour” north, they anticipate good weather coming along the Mexican coast.
The two pilots are in “good shape” but are “understandably getting tired after nearly five days in the air,” the release noted.
The pair initially set out to surpass the current records of 5,208 miles traveled and 137 hours and five minutes in the air.
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