Crashed balloon pilot: ‘I did my best'

Dubai: For days after the hot air balloon he was piloting crashed killing two passengers, Piotr Gorny was jolted awake by memories of the fateful day.
The 45-year-old pilot from Poland had nightmares in which he could hear his passengers’ screams and see the ones who died. He replayed the incident over and over in his mind.
Three months on from the April 25 crash, he has been cleared by the General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) and the Al Ain Appeals Courts of any wrongdoing.
“There is nothing I could have done differently that could have prevented the accident from happening,” Mr Gorny said yesterday during an interview with The National.
Strong winds were blowing three months ago when Mr Gorny, his crew member Hilary Mtui, 27, from Tanzania, and 11 passengers arrived in Nahel, about 50km from Al Ain, for the pre-dawn flight. Concerned about the conditions, Mr Gorny decided to wait and see what would happen with the weather.
“When I received permission to take off, wind speeds were at 0.7kph, which is within the balloon manufacturer’s recommendations for take-off. I had taken off in similar conditions dozens of times before in the past year-and-a-half without incident.
“As we came to land at 45kph, I flew over some power lines and saw a clearing on the desert floor between two sand dunes,” he said. “I brought the balloon down between them and was going to use one of the sand dunes as a brake to bring the balloon to a rest against.”
As the balloon came in to land, Mr Gorny opened the “smart vent” to release all the hot air from the balloon, thereby collapsing it, preventing it from taking off again.
“The landing was perfect, with the gondola upright and the balloon coming to rest atop the sand dune,” he said.
Mr Gorny told everyone to stay in the balloon, including the two men who would soon be dead: Jean-Pierre Chamignon, 53, a tourist from France, and Mukesh Shah, 56, who was visiting from India with his wife and his daughter.
“Within a couple of seconds, the wind caught the balloon, and turned it into a sail, pulling the gondola up above the seven-metre sand dune and back down, dragging it at 15 to 20kph for 300 metres, on its side.”
When the balloon stopped, Mr Gorny saw that two had died and that Mr Mtui had suffered a broken neck.
28/07/10 Essam al Ghalib/The National, UAE

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Categories: Foreign Jul 2010, Safety Jul 2010