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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 March 1999 Issue No. 422 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 - 31 March 1999 Issue No. 422
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Around the world in 20 days
By Nashwa Abdel-Tawab"The eagle has landed. All is okay," were the historic words of Swiss balloonist Bertrand Piccard and his British co-pilot Brian Jones after landing in Egypt on Sunday, the first balloonists to circumnavigate the globe non-stop.
Two centuries after the French Montgolfier brothers first sent a hot-air balloon aloft, Piccard and Jones flew into the record books following an epic 20-day journey that harnessed high-altitude jet streams to power their flight.
The journey took them exactly 19 days, one hour and 49 minutes. The pair travelled 42,810km (26,755 miles) in a giant silver balloon as tall as a 20-storey building.
The balloon lifted off from the Swiss Alps on 1 March, crossed North Africa, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Ocean, South America and finally the Atlantic. Nineteen days after liftoff, the pair completed the journey, a feat which had challenged and eluded dozens of balloonists before them.
Once the Egyptian Army's C-130 plane that carried about 90 foreign journalists and photographers for free found the pair and their Breitling Orbiter III, it signalled the coordinates to two helicopters waiting at a military base in Assiut, southern Egypt. With tears welling in their eyes, both balloonists stepped out of the helicopter that had picked them up and flew them to Dakhla en route to Cairo.
The first non-stop balloon landing in Dakhla Oasis, Egypt making 21 March an historical day
Piccard, 41, a psychiatrist, and scientist Jones, 51, issued their wish list at a brief press conference at Dakhla airport, 800 kilometres (500 miles) southwest of Cairo. Piccard and Jones, sporting three-week-old beards and blue flight suits, said they wanted to reunite with their families, shower and get some well-earned sleep after their historic voyage. Jones said he was grateful for not having had a bumpy jeep ride. He said he had mixed feelings and was also "deflated" like a balloon, in a jocular reference to the huge craft which took the pair on their record-breaking circumnavigation. Both endured cold weather, altitude sickness and lived on dehydrated food during the epic voyage.
Jones said his first priority was to see his wife, Joanne, an experienced balloonist who monitored his extraordinary adventure from the Geneva control room, "and get some sleep".
Piccard expressed his gratitude to the "invisible hand" that saved them during the flight. "When we were above the Atlantic Ocean, we looked at our left hand and saw a thunderstorm and the same was on the right hand and then we thanked the invisible hand that put us in the middle.
"We had the impression that we were guided precisely where we needed to go, and when things did not work out we were given a small shove," Piccard said.
When their huge balloon landed in the desert the pilot said they celebrated by washing their hair with the water that had frozen up during the high-altitude voyage. Their gondola tipped over after the landing because of the high winds and will be retrieved later.
Both men, who spent five years practising for the trip, spoke of their passion for ballooning and marvelled at the beauty of the desert which trapped them for around seven hours before they were picked up.
Jones said he was not disappointed at failing to accomplish his dream of landing near the Giza Pyramids south of Cairo.
"But it would have been great, of course. It is a fantastic thing to actually land next to the Pyramids and we did joke about knocking off the other ear of the Sphinx and really going down in history," he said.
The only real complaint the Anglo-Swiss duo had was that they did not have any crossword puzzles to while away the time. They were not upset about the delay of the helicopter and the seven-hour rest in the desert. "It was quite a unique, perfect landing with no fans watching and that gave us another extension to human depth. We actually adored the shapes and shades of the desert more than the sea. What the invisible hand gave us was seven hours alone in the sand. Having sand, air, light, sun, spacious ground, swallows, even insects, we tried to sleep but the experience was overwhelming," said Jones.
"As for me, I learnt from this trip that it is ridiculous for human beings to fight for small lands and kill other people when there is space all over," said Piccard.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which originally had its five rings emblazoned on the balloon during its last two attempts, removed them for this final trip due to a sponsoring conflict. Watchmakers Swatch are the official Olympic timekeepers, direct competitors to Breitling. But the IOC insisted that the balloon still carried the IOC's moral support and message of peace as it flew around the globe. .
