Balloonists End World Trek Touch Down, With Flight Records, In Burma After China Impasse

The hot air balloon Breitling Orbiter 2, which abandoned its round-the-world attempt but set two other flying records, landed safely Saturday morning in Burma.

The balloon touched down about 9:26 a.m. at the village of Okpo, about 90 miles north of Burmese capital Rangoon, officials said.

The landing took place in a rice paddy about a mile from a main road, they said.

The crew of the Breitling Orbiter 2 set a record for the longest nonstop, unrefueled flight Friday as their balloon floated toward Burma from India, the final leg of its journey from the Swiss Alps.

The team’s bid to be the first to circle the world was abandoned Wednesday because China initially refused to let the balloon enter its airspace.

“For us the goal was really to fly around the world, but it is great to get a second world record,” spokesman Gerard Sermier said.

China belatedly gave the team the go-ahead Thursday to fly through its airspace, but by then the balloon had already changed course, missing its chance to pick up the jet-stream winds needed to propel it across the Pacific.

From Burma, Swiss pilot Bertrand Piccard, Belgium’s Wim Verstraeten and Andy Elson of Britain were to be flown Sunday to Geneva for a celebration party.

Burma, a security-conscious country that only began slowly opening to the outside world 10 years ago, gave the crew the go-ahead to land on Thursday.

The balloon took off Jan. 28 from Chateau d’Oex in Switzerland. On Tuesday, six days after departure, the Breitling team broke the world record for the longest time spent in the air by a balloon. That record was set last year by U.S. balloonist Steve Fossett.

By Thursday afternoon, the balloon had traveled 4,730 miles, a spokeswoman said.

The team’s new world record bests the December 1986 feat of Americans Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, who circled the world in nine days and four minutes in the experimental twin-engine light plane Voyager.

Fossett’s world balloon distance record - 10,000 miles - remains intact.