they are now saying the balloon pilot was a drunk and had a bunch of duis. but they were years ago yet implying this could be the cause. sorta shitty in my opinion. they used to have the balloon festival at the state fairgrounds when they started and a couple years in one dudes balloon went kaput and we saw him fall to his death. it wasnt pretty. balloon was old and patched up. shouldnt have been let off the ground. they say they are trying to make more stringent laws for these things. cuz there aint no gliding down if theres a problem.
Shitty they mentioned it? I don't know. This morning when I saw that his best friend/business partner had said that he knew there would be bad stuff out there and wanted to make sure people knew he was a "good guy" I knew there was a problem. 4 DUI convictions. Not arrests....convictions. That means he drove drunk regularly. An ex described him as a recovering alcoholic. I have no idea if he was drunk or not but he shouldn't have been operating this type of business. I went hot air ballooning once...sunrise over Temecula. Pretty damn awesome.
A mother and daughter was shooting video up to the moment of their rather immediate death. At least that's what they said on the local news here in Austin.
News report on radio today said the ex wife knew he was a drunk and had the dui''s but that he never flew drunk. Also said the BBB warned folks not to go up with this guy. Makes you wonder if he just went out in a blaze of...well whatever that would be. Killing 15 folks sure as hell ain't glory
Or maybe the friend knew he was sober for 4 years and never flew drunk as reported (which I doubt) and is trying to keep him from being misrepresented. Once again, accidents cant ever happen anymore. Gotta find the blame before theres even a hint there was any. They hit a powerline and it caught on fire. Happened before and itll happen again.
Definitely could have been an accident. I do know that with 4 DUI convictions, he'd never have been allowed to fly a commercial aircraft. I think the people getting in to that basket might not have gotten in had they known of his past history. I wouldn't have. By the same token, they could have done a little more research on the person whose expertise was about to put their lives in danger. They probably wouldn't have found out about the DUI's since they were in another state but his business had a long record of BBB complaints. Me? I'm not paying someone when they have a crappy business record. He can be a drunk for all I care but then get a job where the only person who could get hurt or killed is him.
Bullshit. He could blog about being a drunk. He could work in a library. He could open his own packaging shop and be a sub for UPS. There are plenty of things he could do but of course the last kind of job/company he should participate in is one that involves or is completely dependent on public/human transportation, moving vehicles.....you get the drift.
