Pilot Identified in Balloon Crash

Nichols also had a long history of customer complaints against his balloon tour companies in Missouri and IL dating back to 1997.

She referenced a February 2013 crash in Luxor, Egypt. The deadliest balloon crash on record killed 19 of the 21 passengers, when a gas canister exploded in the gondola of the balloon, hurtling it 1,000 feet to the ground.

In order to help investigators piece together what happened, they will be interviewing the balloon crew as well as look at the balloon’s maintenance records. “I don’t understand what the air balloon pilot was doing, I mean I don’t think it was cloudy and I don’t know why he was so close to the transmission lines”. But the form filled out by balloon pilots asks whether an applicant has been convicted of a narcotics drug charge. However, Cannon said, there is no oversight of that reporting requirement for balloon pilots. However, Cannon said there is no oversight of that reporting.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators are trying to determine what caused the crash. Wendy Bartch told the Associated Press that Nichols had been sober for at least the last four years, and that he would never have piloted a balloon after drinking.

Alfred “Skip” Nichols was among 16 people who died when the basket apparently caught fire before the craft came down in a field near Lockhart, about 30 miles south of Austin. Calls to Heart of Texas operations manager Sarah Nichols, 72, rang unanswered, and a woman in Missouri believed to be his sister did not return calls seeking comment. “Sunday was a very social person”, Jones said.

Here’s the latest on Saturday’s deadly hot air balloon crash in Central Texas.

Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides’ operator had previously lived in the St. Louis area, where he pleaded guilty to DWI in 1990, twice in 2002 and once in 2010. He was paroled again in January 2012. Nichols, 49, is also the registered owner of Missouri-based Air Balloon Sports LLC.

Nichols contended that the balloon began to drop because of a lack of wind. Authorities have not publicly named anyone killed in Saturday’s crash, saying it could take a while to identify the bodies.

In a 2015 Facebook video, Nichols said he was inspired to become a balloonist at 15, when one landed on his street. The pilot had to “land short” to avoid striking the retrieval team vehicle, which was parked in the path of the balloon, records show. The crash injured two female passengers. The injured passengers were taken by ambulance to a hospital.

Records indicate that the apparent pilot of the hot air balloon was federally certified to fly balloons.

Investigators work the scene of Saturday’s hot air balloon crash near Maxwell, Texas, Sunday, July 31, 2016.

“There are simply no words to express our profound sadness at this event that has taken away so many of our loved ones”, it said in a Facebook post. She says, “having other people’s lives at stake was Skip’s primary concern”.

In recent years, Bartch said, Nichols was “all about recovery”.

Lorilee Brabson and her daughter Paige, who moved to Texas from Colorado a few years ago, were celebrating Mother’s Day, according to Paige’s brother Jason Pino, who spoke with a Colorado television station about the accident.

The first power line trip was at 7:42 a.m., and the first call to 911 was a minute later. Ground crew members told the NTSB that they launched about 20 minutes after the expected 6:45 a.m. time.

Not counting Saturday’s incident, there have been 60 hot air balloon crashes in the United States since 2011, leading to seven deaths, Sumwalt said.