A Little About Us...
We have over 30 years of experience in hot air ballooning with a perfect safety record. We are a family owned and operated business located in the shadows of the Blue Ridge Mountains. in 1999 we decided to follow a family tradition by going into ballooning full time. Blue Ridge Balloon Company became our way of sharing the beauty of God's Creation with others, and we love getting people up in the air where they can see the countryside with a bird's eye view.
Our roots were originally forged with Liberty Balloon Company of Western New York. LBC is owned and operated by Carroll Teitsworth, one of the balloon world's most well respected and established pilots. It is this experience and attention to flight safety that we bring to the Blue Ridge Balloon Company.
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A Hot Air Balloon is an aircraft, and therefore falls under the control of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In order to fly a balloon, one must be licensed by the FAA, a process which takes many hours of flight training and a number of tests. The pilots for Blue Ridge Ballooning are Jim and Liana Haseltine. Between them they have over 1600 hours of logged flight time and over 30 years of experience. Flight safety is their number one priority. They take a conservative approach to all flight time decisions with a focus on making ballooning safe and relaxing. |
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| Liana | Jim |
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The job of Balloon Flight Crew is vital to the operation of any balloon flight. Experienced crew tend to be great multi-taskers. They need to have a working knowledge of the balloon system, changing weather, the local road system, map reading, radio usage, digital cameras and a number of other things. Most pilots have a number of hours crewing under their belts which undoubtely makes them even better pilots. The pilot and crew work together to create a safe and pleasurable flight. |
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| Chris | Brian |