The flight is over, the balloon is packed up and back on the truck or trailer. Is the bottle of champagne or a can of beer the next thing you reach for?
There is nothing wrong with having a drink in celebration after a flight. There are, however, a few things to keep in mind when you are opening the champagne or the beer. If you are still on the landowner’s property, don’t make the landowner mad by drinking on his property. Maybe he doesn’t care, but what if he doesn’t want you to drink there? The best advice I can give is to wait until you get home, or at least back to the launch field, to celebrate.
When you are celebrating, think about when the next flight will happen. For the pilot, it is eight hours bottle to throttle. While chase crew is not under the same legal mandate, it is not a bad idea to follow the same as a personal rule.
I am not trying to lecture anyone on how to celebrate a flight. Every pilot is different. My pilot is not what one would consider a party animal. After any flight, the only thing she grabs to drink is her Diet Coke. When we are done with a fun flight, usually we’ll go out for ice cream. When we have finished giving a pay ride, we’ll take the passengers back to their cars, where we do the paper work stuff (certificate, pin and card). Then we celebrate by opening a nice cool, refreshing bottle of Welsh’s sparkling grape juice. That might seem stingy to some, however my pilot doesn’t use champagne for several reasons: one, she doesn’t like the taste of champagne, and two, there is liability to think about when giving someone a bit of alcohol and then allowing them to drive home. She also uses the grape juice for celebrating because our crew has many people who are not of the age to drink (like me), and since many of our passengers bring their children along, the grape juice allows everyone to partake in the celebration of a terrific flight.
Even though my pilot uses grape juice instead of champagne or wine, she is still a class act. The grape juice she buys is in a bottle that looks like a wine or champagne bottle, and she serves the grape juice in plastic champagne glasses. I have heard many compliments from our passengers about my pilot using grape juice instead of wine or champagne. After the celebration with the paying passengers, my pilot takes her crew out for ice cream.
Just as every pilot does things a bit differently on their balloons, each one probably celebrates a flight differently, too. The following example is a true story.
Before I begin this little illustration, I strongly suggest that no one should try this at home. There is a pilot in Germany who owns a balloon ride company. This ceremony is called talfin, which means christening in German, and boy do they christen. I was hoping that this is his unique idea and not something that many people do to celebrate a flight, but have been told it is a common initiation in some European countries. Hopefully it will never catch on in America.
When the flight is over, the pilot-in-command performs this little ceremony on each passenger, one at a time. First, the passenger kneels with his back to the pilot. Then, the pilot sets the passenger’s hair on fire, as a symbol of the burner. Next, the pilot dumps dirt on the passenger’s head as a symbol of mother earth (it also serves the purpose of getting the fire out). The final part of the ceremony is when the pilot pours champagne over the passenger’s head, a more traditional tradition in ballooning. It also serves the purpose of fully extinguishing the flame and cleaning the dirt out of their hair, or turning it into a muddy mousse. Like I said at the beginning, this is something you should not try at home, especially the part of setting a person’s hair on fire.
Take the advice of someone who’s hair caught on fire (accidentally, work related, NOT ballooning related). The smell of burnt hair is terrible. My bangs are still growing back and this happened about four months ago. By the way, if you are reading this article and are thinking, "I don’t have much hair left, he couldn’t burn any of MY hair"- wrong! If there is any hair at all on the back of your head, this pilot will set it on fire.
I learned of this ceremony when balloon friends of mine went to Germany. Their son is one of the pilots that does this hair burning, and my friends got this "ceremony" on videotape. When I was watching the tape of the ceremony, I could not believe what this guy was doing to his passengers.
Ballooning is supposed to be fun and relaxing. This ceremony is neither. A ticket for driving under the influence of alcohol isn’t either. We want people to enjoy the sport, not go home feeling personally damaged. So, when you’re done with a flight, do celebrate it. Just remember to drink responsibly-and don’t play with matches.