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A hot air balloon pilot died this week after getting trapped under the balloon basket and fell to death, Vermont state police said.
Longtime pilot Brian Boland, 72, had left Post Mills Airport in Vermont with four passengers when the balloon began to descend rapidly and landed in a field.
The basket tipped over and one of the passengers fell but was not injured, police said. Boland then got tangled in the equipment attached to the ball and got stuck under the basket as he climbed back up.
He fell from an unknown height and landed in a field where he was later pronounced dead, police said.
The balloon continued to fly for a mile and a half until it got stuck in trees in Piermont, New Hampshire.
The other three passengers were able to get off safely and none of the four were injured.
Investigators, including those from the Federal Aviation Administration, gather along the Connecticut River and Highway 25 in Bradford, Vermont on Friday, July 16, 2021, following the death of an aeronaut. (Associated press)
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration will lead the investigation, police said.
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After hearing about his death, people who knew Boland expressed their shock and sadness.
“We were very surprised to hear this, thinking ‘This can’t be Brian’,” David Pierson, a neighboring farmer, told WPTZ-TV in Plattsburgh, New York. “He’s just too experienced. Something terrible, terrible must have gone wrong – hard to believe.”
Pierson told the station that Boland would sometimes land on his farm and the two would go for a short ride.
He was also known to wave people around and shout “Hello!” of his balloon and ending his walks with a little champagne, depending on the resort.
The Balloon Association of America, in a statement posted to Facebook, said, “Our prayers and condolences go out to his family and friends.”
Glen Moyer, editor of Ballooning Magazine, tweeted: “I wake up to the news that the sport of ballooning has lost a creative genius, and I am a friend of 20 years old. RIP Brian Boland.”
Vermont Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray also sent condolences.
“My thoughts are with the family and friends of pilot Brian Boland and the community of Post Mills and Upper Valley. A heartbreaking loss,” she tweeted.
Boland left a career in teaching in the 1970s to get into ballooning, according to a 1979 New York Times article.
In the article, Boland spoke about a few misadventures he had in his early days, including landing in a Vermont swamp.
In a harness he created, Brian Boland, of Post Mills, VT, takes off strapped to a hot air balloon with a passenger over Westshire Elementary School in West Fairlee, VT on February 26, 2013 (Associated Press)
At the time, he called hot air ballooning, “A great sport to go anywhere in particular”.
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Boland was also a world famous balloon designer, one of the most experienced aeronauts in the world and had set several records and won a number of world championships, the Rabbit Hill Inn of Vermont said on its website making the advertising of rides.
WPTZ reported that Boland may have attempted to change fuel tanks when the balloon first descended.
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