‘It’s just amazing’ – Russian breaks 14-year-old world balloon record
A 65-YEAR-OLD Russian Orthodox priest has broken the world record for the fastest around-the-globe flight in a balloon, in just over 11 days.
Fedor Konyukhov landed yesterday near Bonnie Rock in the Western Australia Outback, three hours after flying over Northam, the town where his journey had begun on July 12.
“He’s landed, he’s safe, he’s sound, he’s happy,” said John Wallington, the flight co-ordinator, speaking from the landing site. “It’s just amazing. It’s fantastic – the record’s broken, everyone’s safe. It’s all good.”
The Russian balloonist beat the previous record of 13½ days set 14 years ago by the late Steve Fossett.
Konyukhov showed precision navigation of his 184ft-tall helium and hotair balloon by returning to Australia over the west coast city of Perth, and then flying directly over the airfield from which he had taken off, 60 miles to the east of Northam.
That feat was described as “incredible” by Dick Smith, a millionaire businessman and fellow adventurer, who was on hand to assist with the landing.
“After going 34,000 kilometres [21,127 miles] around the world he crossed the runway where he took off from,” Smith said. “That’s never happened before. It was mainly luck and it’s just unbelievable.”
Smith said Konyukhov emerged from his gondola – a roughly 6ft by 6ft carbon box suspended below the balloon – expressing his appreciation for the smell of the earth and “how wonderful it is”.
Fossett also started from Northam to set a record of 13 days and eight hours for his 20,500 mile journey in 2002.
Konyukhov took a longer route and roughly 11 days and 6 hours to complete his maiden circumnavigation. On the last leg, he was pushed far south into Antarctica and through a thunder storm in which temperatures outside the gondola fell to -58F (-50C).
The gondola heating stopped working on Thursday, so Konyukhov had to thaw his drinking water with the balloon’s main hot-air burner, Wallington said. His oxygen masks also froze. “It is scary to be so down south and away from civilisation,” Konyukhov wrote in one entry in a blog he updated at various points during the flight. “This place feels very lonely and remote just a thick layer of clouds below me and dark horizon to the east.”
The journey also took him to speeds of up to 150 miles per hour and a maximum height of 34,823ft before he released helium to prevent the balloon from continually climbing as its fuel load lightened, his son Oscar Konyukhov said.
The balloonist slept four hours a day in naps of 30 or 40 minutes between checking and maintaining the equipment and instruments.
Konyukhov’s team had said that landing the balloon could be the most challenging and dangerous part of the journey. Crews in six helicopters followed the 1.8-ton balloon inland from Northam to help him descend.
In 2002, Fossett, who was 58 at the time, was forced by strong winds to spend more than a day in the air after setting his record as the first balloonist to circle the globe. Jean Vialade, was so notorious that Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator, allegedly offered him $50million (£38million) to “overthrow the French government” – an offer he declined in order to focus on wine.
This time the militants targeted a domaine under investigation for fraud. Customs inspectors have accused Jean Gleizes of buying 26,000 hectolitres of cheap Spanish wine – the equivalent of almost 3.5 million bottles – and selling it on as French for twice the price.
France is now the biggest buyer of Spanish wine, with sales in LanguedocRoussillon spiking in recent years. In April, French wine makers, who viewed an 8 per cent rise this year as suspect, hijacked five tankers of Spanish wine on the border, pouring the equivalent of 90,000 bottles down the drain.
Frédéric Rouanet, the head of the union for the wine growers of the Aude département, said he condemned CAV action, but could “understand the anger”. He called for investigations in Spain as well as France.