General

Final Results published after debriefing all teams

Team USA 2 (Sullivan / White) landed. Thank you for a spectacular flight! Team USA 2 landed in southern Portugal. Pilots Mark Sullivan and Cheryl White as well as the other three teams still flying are to be congratulated for one of the most tactical flights in the long tradition of the Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett. A flight containing all the... Read more ....

  The Bel1 and Fin1 teams are in a private hotel of the Algerian Government. Everything seems OK and there is a great protection from the government. (5 policemen on and around the hotel room of Luc and Ronny). Today the balloons are on the news all over Algeria in prime time. Also in Belgium reporters have heard the news about the Belgian Gordon... Read more ....

08..09.2009 19:00 loc (tuesday): What a day! Thanks to these brave pilots, we on the surface could enjoy an exciting race on the screens wherever we are on the world. The Coupe Aéronautique is approaching its end. 6 teams are still flying. All these teams have achieved a distance of more than 1.000 kms straight line from their launch-point in Geneva.... Read more ....

08.09.2009 11:56 (tuesday): New Female World Record with 60:48h?! British pilot Janet Folkes is about to break the World Record for Women this very minute. The rules of the FAI require a 1% increase versus the previous record. That record was performed by Lesly P. Davies (USA) with passenger Carol Davis on Oct 10, 1995 in Albuquerque. Her flight... Read more ....

Tonight we received more information about the landing of BEL1 in Algeria. It seems that Algerian authorities were very helpful. Boats under the balloon approaching the shore, and police, the army (with loaded guns…), and medical services at the landing spot. After packing, our brave pilots had to go to a hospital for a complete medical check-up,... Read more ....

08.09.2009 09:00 (tuesday): Bulletin Pilots enjoyed another night while flying over Spain. This is the third sunrise during this Coupe and for most of them a bright, sunny start to another great day in this race. We had some direct contacts via satellite-phone and all teams sounded very confident. We know that some trackers had encountered technical... Read more ....

BEL1 landed very well in a melon field in the Algerian Azeffoun area. The pilots and the equipment are okay and this is also the case with the other teams. Only the Finns got a little bit bruised during the landing. Luckily the locals are very helpful. Tomorrow we try to get the 3 teams together, and try to arrange an easy retrieve.

Teams FIN and AUT landed in Algeria After many hours out on the sea and a time-consuming “battle” to find the winds to make landfall, these two teams finally made it. FIN (Olli Luoama / Ben Mattsson) and AUT (Gerald Stuerzlinger / Nikolaus Binder) are relieved to stay on a firm ground now. We have been in contact with the brave pilots... Read more ....

Bel1, AUT1 and FIN1 decided this afternoon to attempt a landing in Algeria. All official authorities know about the landing and we hope everything goes well. If somebody has connections or knows somebody near the landing spots, please help us! We do need local help for the retrieving etc. None of the 3 teams are familiar with landings in Africa. We... Read more ....

USA 1 (Fricke / Cuneo) landing in France confirmed At 06 UTC / 08 loc the US pilots Barbara Fricke and Peter Cuneo landed their balloon SE of Perpignan close to the city of Villeneuve-de-la-Raho, less than 10 km away from the coastline. 07.09.2009 Team SUI 3 (Krebs/Vollenweider) landed close to Valencia Swiss pilots Max Krebs and Walter Vollenweider... Read more ....