A pilot embarked on a one-shot Saturday morning flight with 94 helium balloons, no burner and no set destination.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A pilot embarked on a one-shot Saturday morning flight with 94 helium balloons, no burner and no set destination.
The 2026 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta opened with its first mass ascension as Jonathan Trappe’s 94-cell cluster balloon waited on wind.
The fiesta started before sunrise Saturday with a drone show around 5:45 a.m.
By about 6:30 a.m., the crowd got the green flag it had been waiting for.
Just before 7 a.m., the New Mexico Chile Flight flew over during the national anthem, and shortly after that, the first mass ascension of Fiesta 2026 got underway.
While balloons rose into the sky, Jonathan Trappe and his crew stayed on the ground waiting to launch their cluster balloon modeled after the movie “Up.”
“So since we last spoke, we got the helium off those trucks and got it staged on the field. We were here at 1:30 this morning, saturday morning, first day at fiesta, doing the inflation. and the inflation went very well. It was great. you can see all 94 cells are already inflated,” said Jonathan Trappe.
The crew finished ahead of schedule, inflating all 94 cells in about an hour and a half.
Stage two, assembling the inflated cells into one cluster, went on hold because of wind coming down from Santa Fe.
Trappe said zero wind is ideal, though the crew can work with light winds around zero to three.
“We usually love that wind. As you probably know, that is the Albuquerque box, that drainage wind on the surface and then coming out of the north, sending you south, and then a wind out of the south, sending you back north. That is the Albuquerque box,” said Trappe.
Trappe said the crew still had time to assemble and take off once the weather allowed.
Trappe took off just before 9 a.m. on Saturday morning.
Trappe’s path ultimately took him into Arizona. Early Sunday morning, his tracker was showing him going at 0 mph.
