Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta

Sunrise over the field

On mass ascension mornings, a small group of balloons called the Dawn Patrol takes off before sunrise. Then, at about 7 am and weather permitting, a balloon flying the American flag rises to “The Star-Spangled Banner”, and the rest follow in two waves. Launch directors in black-and-white stripes, known as zebras, act as traffic police, and all of the more than 500 balloons are in the air in under two hours. The launch field alone covers 78 acres, the size of 54 football fields, and unlike most aviation events visitors can walk right among the balloons as they are laid out and inflated.

Albuquerque’s October mornings are cool, and a local wind pattern known as the Albuquerque Box helps pilots: winds near the ground tend to blow from the north and higher winds from the south, so a balloon can drift south, climb, drift back north and land close to where it started.

Glows and special shapes

The balloon glow was invented in Albuquerque in 1979, when local pilots inflated their balloons on Christmas Eve as a thank-you to residents; the Fiesta launched its own Balloon Glow in 1987. Balloons are inflated after sunset and lit from within by their burners without taking off, and the glows are followed by fireworks. The Balloon Glow is held on the first Sunday night and the Night Magic Glow on the second Saturday. Over two days of the Special Shape Rodeo, balloons shaped like almost anything — a stagecoach, a piggy bank — take to the sky, and they glow on Thursday and Friday nights in the “Glowdeo”. At the Wednesday mass ascension, the Flight of the Nations honours every country represented, with balloons carrying their national flags.

From a parking lot to 365 acres

The first Balloon Fiesta was part of the 50th birthday celebrations of the radio station KOB in 1972: thirteen balloons, from Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and Texas, launched from the parking lot of the Coronado Center mall in front of up to 20,000 spectators. The next year Albuquerque hosted the first World Hot Air Balloon Championship with 13 countries, and in 1975 the event moved from February to October. More than a thousand balloons were registered in 2000, and numbers are now limited because of a shortage of landing sites. The Fiesta calls itself the world’s most photographed event, with an estimated 25 million photographs taken.