CAIRO (AP) – The weekend’s hot balloon crash in Texas has been a grim reminder of a similar but deadlier accident in Egypt three years ago, when 19 foreign tourists burned to death or jumped to their deaths from the burning balloon as their sunrise flight over the famed temples of the ancient city of Luxor drew to a close.
There were no survivors among the 16 people aboard the balloon that crashed in central Texas Saturday, the worst such disaster in U.S. history. Authorities there say the balloon hit high-tension power lines before crashing into a pasture near Lockhart, about 60 miles northeast of San Antonio.
“I am very saddened by the accident in Texas,” said Moamen Murad Ali, the pilot of the Luxor balloon who suffered burns over 70 percent of his body as he tried to put out the fire that consumed the balloon in just a few minutes, killing 19 foreign tourists, who included French, British, Belgian and Japanese nationals.
The death toll surpassed what was believed by ballooning experts to be the deadliest accident in the sport’s 200-year history: In 1989, 13 people were killed when their hot air balloon collided with another over the Australian outback near the town of Alice Springs.
Recounting the final minutes of the 2013 flight in a telephone interview with The Associated Press Monday, Ali said the balloon was tantalizingly close to the ground when the fire first broke out. “I yelled ‘jump’ to the passengers, but only one, a British man, did.”