Do you remember your first hot air balloon flight? Do you remember the anxiety you felt as the pilot told you to “get in!”? Do you remember how happy you were when the balloon lifted off, and the joy of the flight after the landing? Sure you do. I remember my first flight. I was seven, I think. We took off from the local high school, and my father went up with me. The balloon was what we would call today an “old Adams.”
My hands were shaking for the first ten minutes of the flight. To help me calm my fears, my pilot told me to look for swimming pools. Every time that I saw a pool, I told her. The only other thing I remember about my first flight is that after we landed, I had to run to the end of the road and flag down the crew after they fell behind when they got stopped by a train. That is all I remember about my first flight. If you are wondering why we just didn’t get on the radio to talk to the crew, we didn’t start using radios until several years later.
First flights are great, and they are also a bit scary for first time flyers. It’s the responsibility of the experienced to calm the fears of the new, whether the passenger is a paying passenger of a fairly new crew member going for his first flight. When a paying passenger is going up for the first time, the crew can answer any and all questions to the best of their ability. If the person asks a question that you can’t answer, you can direct the passenger to the pilot or someone else who can answer the question. If the passenger is a crew member, you probably can calm his fears a bit easier. Teasing and joking around would be more suitable for a crew member going up than for a paying passenger. For example, whenever my pilot has a pay ride, I try to be as professional as possible, but when its a crew member going up, we joke around as much as we can. After all, ballooning was meant to be fun.
Once my brother pulled a joke on a fairly new crew member who was going up for the very first time. Being the seasoned veteran my brother had this crew member listening to everything my brother was telling him. My brother told him: “When you hear the burner start to crackle, it means you have five minutes until you’re going to crash.” Now, the experienced crew member knows that this is not true, but the new crew member didn’t know. So during the flight, the new crew guy was listening very closely to the burner for the crackle sound. When he heard the sound, he asked the pilot what that sound was and what it meant. With the sound and the question coming at the very beginning of the flight, my pilot was still getting things set in the basket. Since she was busy, she was not paying attention to his question. But when the crew member heard the sound again after she burned, he asked the question again in a very scared tone. With things being set in the basket, she told him that it was the burner cooling off. This answer really didn’t calm him down. But since she was not scared or nervous, he was a bit calmer. With this question not being on the top ten list of questions asked when in the balloon, my pilot asked him why he wanted to know what the sound meant. Then he told her what my brother had told her. She thought it was very funny.
As funny as this story is, and as much fun our crew has had with this story, this is not something that one should tell a pay ride. Telling a pay ride something that will make him more nervous than he already is would not make the passenger or even the pilot very pleased with you. Think about that for a moment.
I have tried to give some ideas on how to calm an anxious passenger. Here are a few more. Try to limit war stories. Putting a limit of the number of war stories will help the anxiety of the passenger. One thing that our crew does is that we make a point to include the passenger in things, like including the passenger in conversations, explaining inside jokes, or even holding the fan. Something that is probably the most important thing is to show confidence in your pilot. My crew chief likes to tell anxious passengers that ballooning is kind of like riding in a car with someone. She will only ride in a car with a driver that she trusts, and the same thing is true in ballooning. She will only crew and fly with a pilot that she trusts. I think that she makes a very logical point.
I would like to dedicate this article to my Grandmother, who passed away when I was writing this article. She always tried to make my life as eventful as possible.