Hot air balloons fiesta in NCC, a flop?

I was the PR Officer of SM City Clark when it first joined the Hot Air Balloon Festival held in Clark way back in 2008. This experience became the springboard of my fascination of "The Weekend of Everything That Flies". In fact, we had our pre-nuptial pictorial during the 2010 Hot Air Balloon Fiesta a month before our March wedding. Since then, I have looked forward to the yearly festivity even when it was transferred to Pradera Verde in Lubao, Pampanga. I brought my kids to witness the hot air balloons as they took off early in the mor ni ng.

It cannot be contested that the Hot Air Balloon Festival which happens every February in the Clark Economic Zone has been one of the much anticipated local tourism events in Pampanga for more than 12 years since it was relaunched in 2000. This annual fest, which draws in more than 60,000 tourists from nearby provinces and even foreign countries, is dubbed as the “biggest aviation sports event in the Philippines” as it features very colorful and specially-designed hot air balloons flown by more than a hundred balloon pilots from all over the world. Aside from these main attractions, the event also includes other events such as skydiving, remotecontrol airplane and helicopter flying exhibitions, freestyle aerobatics, kitemaking and choreographed kite-flying, and other aerial stunts and sports events. Of course, the pandemic happened and this also halted the staging of the yearly event. But after three years since 2020, the Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Foundation Inc. (PIHABF) decided to revive the annual festival last February 16-18 at the New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac. However, as I scrolled down my Facebook feed during the weekend, I felt that the event did not create that much hype and I even scrutinized the pictures posted and saw that there were only a few spectators.