Weather thwarts chair balloon flight

A petrol station owner and an Iraqi adventurer trying to fly from Oregon to Montana in tandem lawn chairs suspended from party balloons, made a hard landing after having to abort their flight due to thunderstorms.

Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta were about seven hours into their flight when they were forced to descend, coming down near a reservoir about 30 miles (48km) east of their starting point.

But after they scrambled out of the contraption, it floated up again, flight organiser Mark Knowles said. He said the balloonists were pelted by hail and snow and buffeted by turbulence before reaching the ground uninjured. “They came down hard. The craft went back up. It’s sitting up in the sky right above us.”

Earlier, about 90 volunteers and several hundred onlookers cheered as the pair lifted off from Mr Couch’s petrol station. The duo safely cleared a two-story motel, a coffee stand and a light post.

“The interesting thing is, anybody can do this,” Mr Couch, the veteran of several lawn chair balloon flights, said before takeoff. “They don’t have to sit on the couch thinking, ‘I should have done it.’ They can do it.”

Mr Lafta, a mountain climber and sky diver, said he had shared Mr Couch’s dream of floating like a cloud. He sent Mr Couch an email after reading accounts of Mr Couch’s earlier flights.

“I want to inspire Iraqis and say we need to defeat terrorists,” Mr Lafta said. “We don’t need just an army. We need ideology and to just have fun.”

The flight was a warm-up for plans to fly a tandem lawn chair balloon rig in Baghdad sometime in the future.