The Air Up There Podcast
How Do You Become a Hot Air Balloon Pilot?

Season 7, Episode 4
Published:

Did you know Ben Franklin witnessed the first human flight? No, he wasn't with the Wright Brothers in Kitty Hawk. In fact, it was 120 years earlier in 1783 when two aeronauts floated over Paris in a hot air balloon. Franklin described watching the balloon's majestic ascent in his journal.

In the early days of ballooning, experiments with balloon fuels and designs occasionally had catastrophic results. Since then, the safety of flying a balloon has come a long way. Today, ballooning is one of the safest and most beautiful modes of human flight for aeronauts, passengers and people on the ground.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Kim and Adam Magee, founders of The Balloon Training Academy and FAA Safety Team representatives. The Magees share how they got started in ballooning, the training process for balloon pilots (who are known as aeronauts) and advice for aspiring aeronauts.

Learn how aeronauts communicate with their ground crew and other users of the national airspace, and about the technologies and tricks balloonists use to track wind patterns. Get a glimpse into the vibrant culture of ballooning, from creatively shaped balloons to unforgettable events with spectacular traditions—like the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta where over 500 hot air balloons traverse the skies above New Mexico.

Ballooning can be both safe and exciting. The FAA has rules for student, private and commercial aeronauts that help keep everyone safe. We require commercial aeronauts to hold medical certificates when flying paying passengers and work with the Balloon Federation of America on an accreditation program.  If you’re interested in learning more, go to FAASafety.gov and contact the Balloon Federation of America
 
Meet Our Guests 
Adam and Kimberly Magee are the Co-Founders of The Balloon Training Academy and FAA Safety Team Representatives. Adam, the Academy's President, is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Designated Pilot Examiner, the 2019 FAA Flight Instructor of the Year, and the 2021 FAA Safety Team Representative of the Year. Kimberly, the Academy's Vice President, holds 6 World Records and 9 National Records in hot air ballooning. She is the recipient of the Balloon Federation of America’s Shields-Trauger Award, the organization's highest honor. 

How Do You Become a Hot Air Balloon Pilot?
How Do You Become a Hot Air Balloon Pilot?
Audio file

Adam Magee: Ballooning we have, there’s so much freedom and you get to be a part of weather a part of that atmosphere and the wind. And the public can interact with balloons a lot more than an airplane. Kids come up and all that. It’s just a totally different aspect.

Kim Magee: You do really feel quiet and peaceful. You don’t have the engine. You just get to kind of soak it all in and you are part of nature at that point. You are going with the wind so it’s serene.

Lucy Jabbour: Those are aeronauts Adam and Kim Magee, founders of The Balloon Training Academy and FAA Safety Team representatives. 

Paul Cianciolo: I’m Paul Cianciolo with the FAA Safety Briefing magazine.

Lucy Jabbour: And I’m Lucy Jabbour and this is ‘The Air Up There’!

Various People: This is your captain speaking. The feeling I get when I’m flying; you get an adrenaline rush. Seeing something fly is awesome. As soon as I had that flight, I just decided. Flying airplanes is all I’ve ever wanted to do. I get so excited about aviation, aeronautics, space, math, and science and engineering. Like star gazing and just wondering what it would be like to be up there. There is a space for you. There’s a lot of camaraderie. The support from the people. The air traffic controllers. There's so much freedom. I fell in love with it. I developed a passion for it. Just know you can do it. There’s certainly a place for everybody in aerospace.

Lucy Jabbour: How do you train to fly a hot air balloon? Like are there schools that you go to or how does that work?

Adam Magee: The license and certification process is a lot like other aircrafts in that, you know, you have a student certificate. Balloons have a private and commercial certificate. You know, you have to go through ground training and ground school and also accumulate flight training. You have to take a knowledge test as well as at the end of your training, we have to do a practical exam with a FAA designated pilot examiner. There are online ground schools available to kind of help kind of introduce you to the ground and the knowledge aspects of ballooning and all the regulations and everything it takes. And for us, that's kind of a task we took head on. We created our own 501c3 nonprofit called The Balloon Training Academy, which specializes in giving balloon knowledge to students and for continuing education for current pilots.

Kim Magee: Adam and I started volunteering for one of the national balloon organizations at balloon camps, and then we ended up running our own balloon camp. And then we realized after that camp, there was just this gap. Nothing to kind of bridge that for kids who went to the camp and wanted to keep doing ballooning but didn't have a parent in ballooning, you know. They didn't have that access that we had. That was one of the major factors of why we decided to start the Balloon Training Academy was so we could provide these kids with a place to learn how to fly a balloon. At least get the ground knowledge and things and then help connect them with instructors in their area, if we couldn't do it ourselves. 

Lucy Jabbour: How did you find your way into hot air ballooning, since it's kind of like such a niche thing?

Adam Magee: My mom saw an advertisement: ‘Balloonist looking for ground crew,’ to be a part of the chase team to help set up and chase and pack up the balloons. So, she started as a ground crew member. You know, we always had a running joke in our family of your first flight’s the most expensive because you buy a balloon afterwards. That's what happened in my family. My mom took her flight, loved it. Bought a balloon probably that same day. So, yeah, I was fortunate enough to be able to take my first flight when I was five years old. My parents always say, I jumped out of the basket and just couldn't stop talking about how great the flight was. And they say that that passion and love for ballooning has just always kind of stayed. Always just excited to talk about it. Did my solo flight when I was 14 and got my certificates 16 and commercial I was 20.

Lucy Jabbour: Kim, how about you? How did you find your way into hot air ballooning?

Kim Magee: There's two ways to get into ballooning. It seems like either you're born into it or you start crewing and it's a very addictive sport because there's a lot of camaraderie. It's very unique. It's a lot of fun. And my parents got into it. Similarly, their next-door neighbor was a balloon pilot. Needed help on the ground crew and they did the same thing. Went crewing. Fell in love and they ended up buying their first balloon the year I was born. So, I've always been in ballooning. I think I went to my first balloon function when I was about two weeks old. I didn't end up getting my license until I was 19.  

Lucy Jabbour: So, you said something about the chase crew. I'm assuming from what it sounds like its people chasing the balloon. But can you like, kind of describe that a little bit more? Like are they... you literally just spotting the balloon in the sky? How does that chase crew work?

Adam Magee: You know, every balloon has... sometimes they go with no crew, but at least one crew person. One could have five, six, seven, eight. They'll help set up the balloon. First time crew are great, you know. The pilot will train you on how to do it. Hopefully have an idea of where the pilot’s going to land. As a crew, you'll have an idea of, you know, what route you should take. But yeah, you're following the balloon, or even if you can out ahead of the balloon and anticipating their path and potential landing spots and hopefully you're there to assist on the landing. Packing up and all of that. And there's some apps that help you track the balloon and kind of plan a flight from the ground crew perspective.

Lucy Jabbour: Do you guys like communicate with your chase crew? Do you like text each other? Do you have like radios you use? Like what does that kind of look like?

Kim Magee: So, balloonists will carry two different kinds of radios. We’ll carry a radio to communicate with our ground crew, just standard radios that you'll see. And then we'll carry an aircraft, a handheld-aircraft radio, as well, so we can communicate with any airspace we come across. Now that technology is become involved, it’s a lot easier. We used to just have a radio and have a paper map, but now we have apps that, you know, we can track - kind of like find my phone. You know, you can see where somebody is on a map. 

Adam Magee: Another kind of fun thing with communications back and forth is every group kind of names their balloon. There's actually balloon trading cards that have a picture of the balloon and the name of the balloon and the back says something about the balloon or the pilot on it. And then some crews will come up with their own chase-crew names. So, the radio communications back and forth are entertaining.
 
Kim Magee: The crew is essential because balloons don't typically launch and land in the same spot.

Paul Cianciolo: Have you had any stories about where you’ve had to land and you just end up somewhere that you don’t want. 

Kim Magee: Well, we typically land, you know, schools, parks, fields. I mean, we can land anywhere. Anywhere that the balloon can fit, we can land. If it's nice and calm we can fit into surprisingly small spaces. We enjoy landing in neighborhoods, because then we get all the neighborhood kids to come out and we can show them the balloon. They can help us pack up. They get to touch the balloon. They can roll on it. Fun things like that. You would be surprised I think how small how little space a balloon needs to land in.

Adam Magee: You know, it also depends on the weather conditions. The lighter the winds the smaller a spot can be. Kim's notorious for finding the smallest landing spot possible. If it can fit the balloon, Kim’s usually there. So yeah. 

Kim Magee: I figure if I can land us in a small spot on a nice time when I need a land. Then I can always spend a small spot. I have more options available to me.

Adam Magee: Yeah.

Paul Cianciolo: Isn't there some magical spot in the U.S. where you can land and take off at the same spot? 

Kim Magee: Yeah, it can happen anywhere. We call that a box wind. Where you can you take off and you head one direction. You fly up to an altitude and you go 180 degrees back from where you were. Albuquerque, New Mexico is famous for their box winds.

Paul Cianciolo: How do you get a balloon to go from point A to point B? You had sent me a video once and it was you with some shaving cream off the side of the balloon. 

Kim Magee: Flying a balloon is all about navigating winds. We don't have a steering wheel. Our only control in a balloon is vertical control. So, we go up by using the burner and heating up the air inside the envelope, which is the fabric portion of the balloon. And we go down by either letting that air cool off or we have a parachute opening in the top of the balloon that we can open and it'll let some hot air out so we can descend. So, with only having those two controls, just up or down, we have to be very good micrometeorologists is what we kind of call it. We have to know a very small-scale weather pattern. What are the winds doing at all different levels. Pilots will use shaving cream, or other light things that they can do over the side because the shaving cream will float in the wind and kind of give you an example of the wind below you. So, you know what's going to happen when you descend into that wind layer. 

Adam Magee: You know, what's most fun about ballooning is just being able to master wind. We release helium balloons. You know and we'll track them with a compass before we take off. You know, now there's even using drones and sending drones up. Collecting the wind data off the how the drone is flying. There’s apps that we fly with. The iPad in the basket that will track our GPS position and tracks and wind profile as we fly. Even as simple as shaving cream, you know, dropping that off the side of a basket.

Paul Cianciolo: I've always thought the rules of the road for aircraft are interesting, because aren’t balloons like the most important aircraft in the sky?

Kim Magee: Yeah, it's the slowest and hardest to control compared to other powered aircrafts. So, we get the right of way, which is nice. We are slow moving, but we are still moving and we find that is hard for people to visualize, because we're so slow moving. We usually only move about seven knots, but compared to an airplane that's going 60 knots, that's slow, very slow.

Paul Cianciolo: So, I've seen different shaped balloons too. Is it harder to steer a giant cow or a Darth Vader balloon, or navigate that, than just your typical envelope?

Adam Magee: Well, yeah, that's the other fun thing about balloons is they can be anything. Anything imaginable. 

Kim Magee: We have a monkey-head balloon. Gordo who is named after the first monkey who went to space. They're harder to fly but they are more fun, too because the ground crew can get into it. So, our ground crew dresses up as bananas when we fly Gordo. They are harder to steer. So, our monkey has some big ears off of the side and so, those'll kind of act like a sail. And so, you will think you're going right for this lovely landing spot and all of a sudden, those ears catch the wind and he has different ideas, and he wants to go land somewhere else sometimes.

Lucy Jabbour: Are there like some things about flying hot air balloons that most people don't know. Like is, are there a couple of terms you could share with us that have meaning or that are sort of like terms you only hear in a hot air balloon community?

Adam Magee: Yeah, balloonist have their own interesting words for things. At a balloon event, the person in charge of kind of the balloon activities is called the balloon-meister. And then, zebras who are there as kind of the launch directors and they'll wear kind of the black and white striped official... 

Kim Magee: Like a referee, Jersey.

Adam Magee: Referee jersey uniform, because they are zebras. They'll dress up as zebras. 

Kim Magee: A lot of people get into it. It's very cool. 

Adam Magee: At balloon events, you know, there's also a balloon glow, where as it becomes darker, balloons since there's fire are able to light up in the night sky. 

Kim Magee: Balloonists will do what's called an all burn, where everybody will light the burners at the same time. So, you'll get a very pretty picture of all the balloons glowing at once. And then they also do things called twinkles. Balloonists will turn the burners on and off and it kind of looks like little fireflies lighting up.

Adam Magee: So, if you are ever at a balloon event and balloons aren't glowing, just yell out all burn in five and start counting down. You'll get them all to start burning. 

Lucy Jabbour: Good to know.

Paul Cianciolo: Do you have some advice for other people that want to get involved in ballooning? Like they don't even know where to start? 

Adam Magee: You know, the best way is to Google who provides balloon rides in your area. Get connected there through the ground crew. Learn the ins and outs of the ground crew and the chase team and the setup and take down. Kind of build your time and experience there.

Hot Air Balloon PSA: Not all hot air balloon operations are equal. And it is up the passenger to do a little homework before paying for a ride. First, ask for the aircraft’s registration number and enter it under the Quick Search box at faa.gov. Then ask to see the pilot’s certificate, to make sure they have one. Confirming aircraft registration and pilot certificates lets you know that safety requirements are current. Do your research before you fly in a hot air balloon or any other aircraft. It’s the safe thing to do.  

Lucy Jabbour: Thanks for listening! Coming up, in the next episode of ‘The Air Up There,’ we’re talking with Kamora Freeland, one of the youngest African American female pilots in the country.

Kamora Freeland: I had never seen Black pilots. So, once I got immersed in Black aviation, it changed my whole perspective. Once I met these other pilots and I developed relationships with them, I fell in love with aviation even more. 

Lucy Jabbour: For more info check out faa.gov/podcasts.