Associated Press Up and away. Fine wine, fine food and ballooning. Despite the recent deaths of a vacationing Georgia couple who crashed, balloon owners say the sport is safer than walking. The National Transportation Safety Board says that from 1994 to the present, there have been 100 reported hot-air balloon accidents.
Safety is constantly emphasized, say company owners.
Tom Reusse, chairman of IMC Agency Inc., in Burnsville, Minn., which insures more than half the hot-air balloons in the country, says ballooning is one of the safest sports around. You can be a mile high and even if you lost power, you would basically glide down slowly and hit the ground about as hard as a parachute landing. It's such an inherently safe aircraft. For Bruce Zimmerman and his friend Aubrey Uresti, both San Franciscans, safety wasn't an issue. The first hot-air balloon was sent aloft in the late 1700s by the French Montgolfier brothers, Jacques and Joseph.