Hot air balloons

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MyBoyChe

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Does anyone know whether there are any rules about where they can fly and do they need landowners permisssion to land? Just as I let my boy into his field tonight one came over really very low and landed 2 fields away on private land, owner doesn;t live close by so wouldn't have known about it. I dread to think what would have happened had anyone been riding , bridleway goes around the edge of that particular field.
 
The one and only time I have been in a hot air balloon, the pilot just used his OS map to identify where we were then looked for a suitable stubble field!
He did have some fields marked in red on his map that he wasn't alloweed to land in, although I'm not sure why?!
When we landed, the landowner didn't seem to be all that pleased even though we landed in a stubble field and it wasn't one of the fields that was marked in red.
 
I went on one last month and yes they can land where they like and always go to see the landowner to apologise/compensate. The guy i was with was so so aware of avoiding fields with horses and had burners that were quieter if he got blown in the direction of a horses field (also sheep, cows etc). Sometimes they have no choice where they go though!
 
Blimey, hadn't thought of that, I'll be watching overhead now for one to come crashing down. we seem to get quite a lot of them our way through the summer.
 
no idea but we have a lot overhead in the summer .luckily horses dont seem to mind but i guess it would be a different matter if they landed in the field
 
They are governed by the civil aviation authority and there is a fixed fee that they pay landowners when they land on their field.

If you have a problem with them then contact the Civil Aviation Authority with the name and colour of the baloon and registration number if you can get it.
 
We had one land in the next field to ours, took down part of our wall with the basket, they never appologised or anything else, had three mares running round like loonies as a result of the balloon being so close!
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the farm where i keep the horses is near to outskirts of bristol so its bedlam when the bristol balloon fiesta is on however they are always friendly and turn burners off when going over livestock - they always leave a lovely bottle of wine/champagne!!

some farmers object to them landing so on their maps their fields are marked in red so if you do not want them to land i'm sure you could phone up local balloon companies and tell them.
 
Peter, thank you for that, very useful. As a matter of interest do you know where the registration number is, is it on the balloon itself and are they a set sequence of numbers and letters?
 
Ballons as said above are regulated by the Civil Aviaiton Authority. Balloons can land where they like, however they have to have third part public liability for an damage caused and most AOC holding balloon companies do pay landowners or offer gifts when they land in their fields. However a balloon can land where they need to, but they do need the landowners permission for the retrieval crew to drive over their field to recover the balloon.

Balloon pilots do try to avoid animals and low flying over them however this is not always possible. The British Balloon and Airship Club are the people to write to if you are having problems with balloons scaring livestock. They will publish a sensitive area over your property which appears red on the aeronautical maps for the pilots. However, this does not mean they are not allowed to fly over your property, this is merely a gentlemans agreement that they will do everything in their power to avoid flying over your property.

The registration of the balloon is on the envelope i.e. the balloon itself the registration will be G- then four letters so eg G-CAAA.

Commercial balloon operators i.e. AOC holders are far more strictly regulated then private balloons (ones not carrying paying passengers).

If balloons are really becoming a nusiance contact the BBAC if you believe a breach of regulations has occurred contact the CAA. Under the UK Air Naviation Order an aircraft is not allowed to fly less than 500ft to any person, vessel or structure unless in normal aviation practice for take off and landings. As a rule of thumb unless the balloon is landing or taking off you should not be able to read its registration as it is designed to be read by the human eye at less than 500ft. However very few balloons breach regulations due to the nature of them, so the BBAC is normally your best port of call, they are very helpful and do understand horse owners concerns, you will need your ordance survey grid reference and if possible the balloon registration and/or colours and times and dates of the problems, they will then look into your problem and see if it warrants a sensitive area or not.
 
We had a balloon land in a stubble field up the road from us once in land belonging to the large land owner of the area. His gameskeeper turned up immediately with a gun and shouted everyone off the land, stopping them from removing the balloon! The owner sued the balloon company for disturbing the pheasant feeding sites and loss of income from next year's shoot and got quite a few thousand pounds off them. We never saw any balloons again!
 
Thanks everyone for your input, especially Peter and Scally, that was really great info. No harm was done last night, my concern was that if anyone had been riding, the bridleway in question runs around the edge of the field, separated by a wire fence on one side and a hedge on the other. The track has quite a lot of rabbit holes near the edge and if a horse panicked and ran for home!! well you can guess the rest. Will keep a careful watch on the skies above before I use that route in future. What a diverse amount of knowledge we have on here.
 
Thanks for an interesting topic. We regularly have balloons coming over and have to get the big lad in asap or we fear he'll do himself a real damage he's so frightened. One day we saw them coming a little too late (still some distance away though) and my OH had a hell of a job leading him in, it was quite frightening.
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I think they do have flight paths. Quite a few years ago I had someone viewing a horse I was selling and a balloon bumped along the hedge and kept saying sorry, sorry and he turned his burner on and off. The horse never bothered I decided to keep him which I did until the end.
 
I used to have a problem with them coming very low over our field as there is a commarcial school site nearby.

I contacted the school and now they are higher.

They argued that they didn't think there were horses in the fields (despite there being 2 stable blocks!)
 
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