How safe is the average passenger ride business today? It’s a question that if asked, will garner as many answers as there are people to respond. Balloon Life chose to seek out three veteran ride pilots in different regions of the country and ask them. The most quizzical, yet also the most simplistic answer came from Kevin Poeppleman. “As safe as the pilot makes it,” was his response.
Poeppleman, a former BFA education committee chairman and one of the originators of the BFA safety seminar concept, operates Adventures Aloft in Clarksburg, Maryland where he has established a 20 year flying record without an accident. Today about 30 percent of his business is flying passengers. For Poeppleman there is one vital key to a safe flight, an adequate pre-flight briefing... more he says than just telling a passenger how to prepare for landing.
“I brief my passengers before flight on what they are permitted to hold on to and touch, on where they can stow their equipment and where, if they get tired, they can sit. I show them the different points at which they can hold onto inside the basket for landing including the interior rope handles.
“I then go through a preparation for landing before we fly, taking the heavier passengers and placing them in front and the lighter people to the rear, explaining that these are the positions I want them to take upon landing. I advise them to stow cameras if they have bags for them, if not put them around their neck and under their arms so they cannot fly up and hit them in the face.
“The other way I prepare them is to discus the landing. I tell the passengers that in anything more than six knots the balloon will want to dig in, then swing like a pendulum. I tell them to expect a hard lurch forward so they can prepare for this when it comes. If they are expecting the impact, lurch forward, bounce and swing, they can prepare for it. If they’re taking pictures or other things they shouldn't be doing, they can’t.”
Pete Carter, owner and operator of Airventure Balloonport in Plano, Texas agrees with the importance of an adequate pre-flight briefing, what he calls “the briefing from hell.”
“I try to cover every potential problem that could happen and prepare the passengers for it. In that way, should there be a real emergency, they will not be hearing instructions and other things for the first time,” says Carter.
“I also believe you should prepare your passengers for landing prior to the liftoff, in- flight, and prior to actual touch down, and then repeat and repeat the 'bend your knees and hold on’ instructions until the landing is complete.”
Carter also feels it is just as important for the pilot to know his passengers as well as he knows the balloon and the current weather conditions. By pre-qualifying your passengers he says you can avoid many situations that could lead to problems in the air. (See Know Your Passengers, Carter’s not entirely tongue-in-cheek preview of potentially problem passengers.)
Poeppleman agrees that in-flight distractions, often initiated innocently by passengers, are a leading cause of accidents. So he has adopted what he calls his 100-foot rule.
“I tell my passengers that below 100 feet I will not talk to you unless I initiate the conversation, for two reasons. First, powerlines scare us and second, we scare livestock. At 100 feet or less all of my attention is on any livestock that might be down there that I cannot see but need to get up and over, or powerlines, especially the little single lines running for a farmer’s house to a small outbuilding.
“As balloon pilots we have several tasks, including playing tour guide to our passengers, but a pilot’s first task is to fly safe and get the people down safe. If you tell them that’s the rule beforehand, they’ll abide by it. And if someone asks me a question below 100 feet and I don’t immediately respond, they remember my 100 foot rule.”
Before he retired in 1995, Chuck Foster built Balloon Aviation of Napa Valley into one of the world’s most successful ride operations in the world. He says it was easy to relate to Carter’s idea of pre-qualifying one’s passengers. In more than twenty years of flying rides, Foster has probably seen it all...
“We had a man come in one morning with a stainless steel halo. It was supported for steel rods that were bolted to his hips and he wanted to go for a balloon ride. He even went so far as to bang his head against his car to prove to us that was the least likely passenger to get hurt,” Foster recalls. The man did not fly.
On any given morning Foster would put a fleet of balloons and pilots in the air, but he insisted on a group briefing with all passengers and pilots in attendance. A part of that briefing included searching out any passenger ailments that might prove a problem in or after the flight.
“During the course of the briefing, I would always say, if anyone is pregnant this morning, or has any other ailment or disability we should know about, please talk to us now.
“It didn't mean they automatically did not get to fly, but it helped us be aware of potential safety problems. And this was usually a follow-up anyway because our reservationists were also trained to ask passengers when they booked the rides if there was anything we needed to know in order to make their flight more comfortable,” says Foster.
Upon landing, Foster would position the heavier people up front, lighter ones and himself to the rear. The reason for this is a simple one of physics having to do with mass and inertia. Foster prefers to position himself at the rear of the basket where he feels he can better control the passengers. Conversely, Poeppleman prefers to be in front feeling he can use his body to help block anyone from leaving the basket unexpectedly.
As simple and pragmatic as Poeppleman’s 100-foot rule, is another bit for advice from Foster. “It was our experience,” he explained, “that when it came time for the actual landing people tended to glaze over. They had been briefed about it at least twice by then anyway. So I think one of the simplest little tricks that is the responsibility of every pilot is to know his passengers by their first name. It may seem like nothing, but if you need to correct what a passenger may or may not be doing, you need to know their first name. You need to get through that glazed mental state, and this can happen even on the most non-dramatic landing. It’s a safety issue that people would probably start yawning at its mere mention, but when you need to convey important information quickly, you need to know a person’s name.”
Many might be surprised that in our conversations with these three veteran ride pilots, most of the conversation centered on the pilot’s responsibility to insure safety, not the equipment. However, partitioned baskets, padded interiors and turning vents all received nods as having been very positive steps forward toward improved passenger safety with Poeppleman voting for some type of pilot restraint.
A fourth pilot and veteran in his own right, the former owner/operator of the Windy City Balloonport in Chicago, Guy Gauthier offered a final thought about the pilot’s experience and the role it plays in passenger safety.
“A lot of ride pilot’s have hundreds, even thousands of hours, but it’s like they’ve made the same flight 1,000 times over. If I were to give my Mother a balloon ride with a pilot I did not know, I would look for a pilot who is high hour yes, but also one who has experienced flying in a wide variety of terrain and conditions, a real road warrior.”