Be more Pacific: Gas-filled balloon completes record-breaking flight

A gas-filled balloon co-piloted by an American and a Russian touched down safely in the waters off Mexico last night, completing a week-long trans-Pacific flight that unofficially broke two world records. The balloon carrying Troy Bradley of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his Russian co-pilot Leonid Tiukhtyaev, landed near La Poza Grande in the Mexican State of Baja California Sur after a flight that lasted six days, 16 hours and 38 minutes and covered 6,646 miles.

The pilots made a controlled descent to a gentle water landing about four miles off the Baja coast.

Kim Vesely, a spokeswoman for the ballooning mission

Bradley and Tiukhtyaev, known as the Two Eagles, left Saga in southern Japan on January 25 in their attempt to surpass the world distance record for flying a gas-filled balloon, as well as the record for time in flight for that type of aircraft. The flight surpassed the distance record of nearly 5,208 miles for gas balloons set on the only previous manned trans-Pacific flight, in 1981. It also topped the flight duration record of about 137 hours aloft in a gas balloon set in 1978 by a team crossing the Atlantic.

World balloon record