‘Balloonatic’ counts cost of sky-high stunt
Man who floated above aircraft on chair must pay thousands in fines and donations
CALGARY — A man who strapped more than 100 helium balloons to a lawn chair and soared above the Calgary Stampede grounds apologized Friday for the danger he caused, but said he doesn’t regret his actions.
“I have the greatest story to tell for the rest of my life,” said Daniel Boria, 27, when asked outside his sentencing hearing if it was worth it. I understood the risks, but if you do anything, you’re going to get in trouble.
“If you don’t do anything, you won’t be in trouble but you won’t get anywhere either.”
Boria, who attended Spectrum Community School in Saanich, pleaded guilty in December to dangerous operation of an aircraft. Floating into Calgary airspace in July 2015 was part of a publicity stunt for his cleaning company and earned him the nickname “Balloonatic.”
Boria tied industrial-sized balloons to a lawn chair as part of a plan to parachute over the Stampede chuckwagon races, but high winds forced him to jump early, before he reached the track.
“The stunt was unconscionably stupid,” Judge Bruce Fraser said at Friday’s sentencing hearing.
“There was nothing fantastic, fun or exhilarating about it as the offender was quoted describing it. It was dumb and dangerous.”
Fraser said the lawn chair travelled into the flight paths of incoming and outgoing commercial airplanes. It was spotted by an incoming plane and the air traffic control tower.
“It is unknown what height he achieved, but there is an estimate of some 14,000 feet,” Fraser said. “At some point a commercial aircraft, the offender called it a 747, passed underneath him.”
The judge said the stunt could have led to disaster.
“If he was headed into an oncoming aircraft, he could not have diverted away from it nor could the aircraft have avoided him,” Fraser said.
“A collision could have disabled the aircraft in a number of ways causing it to fall and crash.”
“Not only would there have been a loss of lives of those people on the aircraft, the crash would have been in a densely populated metropolis, risking the lives of those on the ground.”
Fraser fined Boria $5,000, with an additional $1,500 tacked on as a victim-impact fee. Boria was also required to donate $20,000 to a local veterans’ foodbank.
“I have remorse,” Boria said outside court.
“I understand we did cause a little bit of danger. But, at the same time, when you text and drive, they don’t charge you as if you were to hit a whole bus of kids.
“I really do apologize for wasting everybody’s time.”
Boria said he originally wanted a plane to drop him off so he could jump into the Stampede grounds, but all the pilots he contacted in Canada, the United States and Mexico refused.
He said that is when he came up with the idea of using the balloons and the lawn chair.
Boria’s lawyer, Alain Hepner, said his client would have likely received a harsher sentence if he had not admitted to his crime.
“I think the resolution that was arrived at between Crown and I on behalf of Dan was most beneficial,” Hepner said.
Boria, who did not stop smiling when being interviewed outside court, said he was not embarrassed.
“It’s pretty hard to take it seriously when you guys are asking me these questions based on me flying a lawn chair lifted by helium balloons,” he told reporters.