Mar. 22—ROCHESTER — Federal investigators will produce a report on a balloon crash in Rochester this week that, miraculously, the pilot and two passengers walked away from with only minor injuries.
The crash
happened at around 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 20, 2024.
A video from a traffic camera shows the balloon descending as it crossed an open field before striking power lines on the west side of U.S. Highway 63 South between 40th and 48th Streets Southwest.
The balloon pilot, Mike Lesmeister, owner and pilot for Lesmeister Balloon Company, said in a voice message that he is working with the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration on a report on the crash. As for his passengers, he said both are pastors, and all three — himself included — walked away “with just minor bumps and bruises … everybody is safe.”
Jennifer Gabris, spokeswoman for the NTSB in Washington, D.C., said the balloon, an Aerostar International S53A, has been recovered to a secure facility for examination at a future date.
Lesmeister told Twin Cities TV station KSTP
that a sudden wind gust suddenly changed the balloon’s altitude and was the likely cause of the crash.
According to the National Weather Service in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the temperature recorded at nearby Rochester International Airport about an hour before the crash was 31 degrees. The wind was at 8 mph with gusts up to 20 mph.
Russ Lucas, a balloon pilot from Dodge Center, Minnesota, with more than 2,500 hours of ballooning experience over 19 years, said he believes the balloon may have been headed for a landing spot east of Highway 63 beyond the businesses located there, probably a half-mile down range. He said the size of the balloon can make it difficult to change its trajectory at a moment’s notice.
“One thing is the size of the balloons are essentially 10 stories tall and between 4,000 and 6,000 pounds,” Lucas said.
Since balloons also have no brakes and no steering wheel, stopping and changing direction can be difficult at best, Lucas said.
“You can come down quite quickly,” Lucas said. “You can also go up quite quickly, but when your momentum going down, to arrest that momentum and go up can take more time than you maybe have.”
Lesmeister is a pilot with 27 years of experience.
His company was founded in 1997
. He told KSTP he has flown hundreds of flights in his career without an incident such as this one.
Lucas said crashes that involve power lines — like the crash on Wednesday — usually involve serious injury or death, so it was “a miracle” that everyone, the pilot and passengers, all walked away from the crash with nothing more than minor injuries to report.
Commercial hot air balloon pilots must undergo training and earn a license, Lucas said, and they usually require passengers sign waivers before a flight. As a former commercial hot air balloon pilot, Lucas said he would generally talk to their passengers about the dangers that are inherent with hot air balloon flights while talking about safety procedures.
And while a good pilot can minimize that risk, Lucas said even experienced pilots can find themselves trapped by circumstances. That, he said, is his guess on what happened Wednesday.
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