Wed, Sep 13, 2017
Vincent Leys And Christophe Houver Flew More Than 1,800Km (991 Nautical Miles) To Win The Gordon Bennett Cup 2017
French balloon pilots Vincent Leys and Christophe Houver won the 61st Gordon Bennett Cup over the weekend of September 8-10. The Gordon Bennett Cup is the oldest and most prestigious gas-balloon race in the world.
The pair travelled 1,836.06 km (991 nm) having launched on Friday from Gruyères near Fribourg, Switzerland. Twenty-one gas balloons took off on Friday evening to compete in the race, which sees gas-balloon pilots fly through the night over several days. Whoever goes furthest, wins.
Windy conditions this year saw the balloonists pushed northeast overnight. The direction of travel meant on Saturday many crews had to land in Poland in order to avoid violating Russian airspace around Kalingrad.
By Sunday morning just five teams remained in the competition. Only Leys and Houver managed to squeeze through the narrow airspace corridor between Kaliningrad and Belarus, giving then the win.
Behind them, Switzerland’s Kurt Frieden and Pascal Witprächtiger (SUI-1) and Spain’s Anulfo Gonzales Redondo and Angel Aguirre Rial (ESP-1) hung on to land a few kilometres short of the Lithuanian border.
The win is the second for the pair flying together as a team – they also won in 2013, when they flew 1,402.42km after launching from France. Vincent Leys however has been in the winning team eight times.
The win means that the 2019 Gordon Bennett Cup will launch from a location in France.
Established in 1906, the Gordon Bennett Cup was re-started for the modern era in 1983. Since then it has attracted many of the world’s top balloon pilots, providing a challenge unrivalled anywhere else in the ballooning world.
(Image provided with Gordon Bennett Cup news release)
More News
Aviation Governance Secured...At Least For a While The National Business Aviation Association similarly applauded the passage of the FAA's recent reauthorization, contentedly recou>[...]
Emphasis On Growing The Future of Aviation Through Concentration on 'AFFORDABLE FLYERS' It's been a number of years since the Latest Edition of Jim Campbell's HUGE SportPlane Resou>[...]
Amazilia Aerospace GmbH, Develops Digital Flight Control, Flight Guidance And Vehicle Management Systems Textron eAviation has acquired substantially all the assets of Amazilia Aer>[...]
Honeywell's Primus Brings New Tools and Niceties for Hawker Operators Hawker 4000 business jet operators have a new installation on the table, now that the FAA has granted an STC f>[...]
Company Celebrates Niche-but-Important Advancement in Industry Standards Echodyne has announced full integration of its proprietary 'EchoFlight' radar into the e American Aerospace>[...]
Bolen Gives Congress a Rare Thumbs-Up
See All