“It’s the oldest form of human flight, going back to the 18th century, and yet there are all these places in the world where people have still never flown,” said Allie Dunnington. She was smiling against a Zoom background of five hot air balloons rising above Bristol, in the northwest United Kingdom. “It’s funny, when people ask, ‘What’s your profession?’ and I say, ‘Balloon pilot.’ They always ask me, ‘What?’”
Few people know more about globe-trotting and hot air balloons than Allie. A German native now based in Bristol, she holds the women’s world record for the most countries flown in a hot air balloon: 105. Her late husband, Phil Dunnington, still holds the world record for men at 127. In terms of aviation power couples, few rank higher, especially in the world of balloons.
“When I look in my logbook, I started off having the most exotic countries as my first countries, like Fiji, Libya, and Senegal, because Phil had already done Europe,” she said. “Places like France and Spain came as late as entry number 90.”
Around the World in 6,000 Days
Allie and Phil started ballooning together in 2003. At the time, Phil had almost a three-decade head start on the country count. While Allie was brand-new to aviation, he had been flying since his early twenties, ever since he started working as an operations manager at British Airways. Over the next twenty years, Allie and Phil would pilot countless tourists across the United Kingdom, shoot films in sub-Saharan Africa, organize balloon tours around Georgia and Armenia, soar over Mongolian deserts and Sri Lankan jungles, and consult for tourist agencies around the world. Riding with the wind, they never left a moment for standing still.
“Expeditions are always a challenge,” Allie said, “Whatever else happens, it’s either weather or bureaucracy or logistics. How do you get your balloon into the country if there isn’t a balloon already there? How can you link up with local people?”
Allie’s last country in Europe was Malta, a bucket-list item she has had in mind for years and only just completed last fall. “I worked for two years writing official emails to the CAA [Civil Aviation Authority,” Allie said, “begging for permission to do a little hop.” The red tape was a nightmare, but in the end, Allie got clearance for a five-minute flight at 05:00 from Gozo, a four-mile-wide island just northwest of Malta. “In some countries, you just look at the maps and make sure you are flying outside controlled airspace,” Allie laughed. “Sometimes you just find a nice farmer who lets you to take off from his field.”
Taking Flight–on the Third Career
For all her accomplishments, Allie discovered ballooning surprisingly late in life, with no prior background in aviation. “I never ever thought I would get a pilot’s license,” she said, “I grew up in a family with two feet on the ground. In fact, I even hated flying. I always got sick on my scheduled flights.”
Allie studied languages in university at Markgröningen, near Stuttgart, Germany, where she earned her M.A. in Asian Studies and later her PhD in Anthropology. Fluent in Chinese and Japanese, she led tours around Asia and guided hiking trips in Scotland and Cornwall. After twenty years as a tour guide, she decided to get a “proper job” and earned a nursing degree. She had no plans to start what she now calls her “third career” in ballooning until 16 November 2002, when she met a man named Phil Dunnington at the poolside in Bagan, Burma.
“I was actually quite sick,” Allie remembered, “I was guiding a trip in Burma, and had lost my voice, which is obviously the worst as a tour guide. But only because of that, I was at a swimming pool, resting and drinking ginger tea, when I bumped into Phil, who was just starting the balloon business in Burma as a consultant and pilot himself.” Phil and Allie got to chatting.
Allie soon found out that Phil was a balloon pilot and happened to be taking a flight later that afternoon. Three people from her tour signed up, but there was one space left. Phil extended the invitation, and Allie said yes.
“To be honest, it was one of the most magical things that I’ve ever done in my life,” Allie remembered with a smile. “We floated towards the sunset over these 2,000 temples of Bagan and finally landed in a small village. All the children and villagers came running out to the balloon. And then they pulled out the champagne!” Allie laughed. “You do this for a living?” she asked Phil. “This is just amazing. Wow.” After that flight, Allie fell in love with both ballooning and the pilot who introduced her to it.
Up and Away– A Marriage Forged in Flight
“Phil and I didn’t meet up again for a few months,” she said, “but after we did, we were married within the year. It was just a blink!” If they had wasted no time launching a new life together, neither would Allie and Phil have wasted time getting back into the air. Phil was one of the first balloon pilots in the UK and owned a couple of balloons. He gave Allie a go at the burner. “I thought, why not? I can try this,” Allie recalled, “Let’s go!”
Through Phil’s encouragement, Allie earned her private balloon license within the year. She soon followed with her commercial rating and later became an instructor, examiner, and Part 66 inspector. “Ballooning has changed my life, literally,” she said. Allie and Phil started working as commercial pilots in India, Ethiopia, Burma (Myanmar), and across the UK.
In their time off, they chased the last countries in Europe missing from their logbooks. Light-weight two-person balloon packed in the back of the van, they set out across the far east and north of the continent: Moldova, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Estonia, Norway, and Ukraine. In 2007, they decided to take their globe-trotting to new heights and target a country that had been on both of their bucket lists for years.
“It was both of our dreams to visit Cuba, but there aren’t any balloons there,” Allie said, “It’s not like you drive to Cuba. You can’t even go by ship, really. So the crazy idea was to buy the Beech.” Allie and Phil outfitted a 1954 vintage twin-engine tailwheel Beech 18 (G-BKGM), a classic multi-use aircraft in World War II-era military and civil aviation. They modified their balloon to fit inside. The renovations took almost three years.
At the end of it, Allie, Phil, and their crew flew from the UK to Greenland, with a layover in Iceland, where Allie became the first female pilot in history to do a balloon flight over the country. After a close shave with an iceberg in Greenland, they soared through Canada, down the Eastern Coast of the United States, and then through the Bermudas into Cuba.
“We got the reception of our life,” Allie said, “the whole of the [Cuban] Aero Club, with little kids dressed up with flags, were there when we arrived.” The couple did four breathtaking flights over the limestone Viñales Mountains in western Cuba, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. “It definitely was worth all the money, all the efforts,” Allie reflected, “It was extraordinary.”
Inside the Basket–and the Best Flight
But even the long trek to Cuba takes just a few seconds in Allie and Phil’s two-decade-long highlight reel. “People often ask me, ‘What’s your best flight?’” Allie said, “I mean, it’s so hard to say, isn’t it? Because each flight is so different. Even when I went out this morning, I said to my passengers, ‘Look, I’ve never landed in this field before.’ Because with ballooning, coming even from the same take-off site, you never know where you’re going to end up. Every flight is new and exciting.”
Mechanically, flying a balloon is more like riding an inner tube down a river than jet skiing through a lake. The balloon goes with the flow, literally. But that doesn’t mean pilots are simply along for the ride. “Obviously, we’re a bit more like helicopters than fixed-wing aircraft, since we can land in small, unusual spaces and don’t need a runway or an airport,” Allie explained. “But despite what most people think, we actually can control where we fly and land! It depends on the wind speed and direction at various altitudes. That means choosing a good launch site prior to flight is absolutely essential.”
Controlling the balloon was pivotal the day Allie and Phil took a flight across the Bristol Channel. Low winds forced them to a landing earlier than planned, and Allie, a newly minted pilot at the time, maneuvered the balloon over a motorway and set it down in front of a massive coal heap just in time. The heat from the coals risked deflating the balloon, so Phil and Allie had to pack up quickly. A posh Range Rover cruised over and interrupted the teardown.
“Oh my God, they’re going to put us in prison!” Allie thought. The posh ranger turned out to be the manager of the coal mine. He had never seen a balloon before and was so excited by the story, he wrote an article about Allie and Phil for the coal miners’ magazine.
“It can also be very frustrating because we’re so weather-dependent,” Allie continued, “If there’s no wind, we just can’t move. Especially in the UK, no wind can mean fog, and of course, it’s not safe to fly in poor visibility. We also can’t fly if the wind’s blowing in certain directions, since it could carry you into restricted airspace or out over the sea.” Allie paused, thoughtful. “We have a lot of limitations, so that can be quite frustrating.”
But as in her career, she’s learned to make the most of where the wind takes her. “On the other hand, I always say that as a balloonist, you also become quite philosophical,” she finished, “and good at going down to the pub!”
The Floating Philosopher
Ballooning has been around for over 200 years, ever since Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier launched the first “aerostatic” flight from Versailles Palace in 1783. But even though it’s the oldest form of human flight, most pilots today forget to think about balloons as a mainstay aircraft. The industry now trades almost exclusively in tourism and promotional advertising, highly concentrated in one of the most challenging places on the planet to fly: the United Kingdom.
“People book flights mainly for the adventure and the visual experience,” Allie said. “Like earlier today, when we took a group flying over Bristol, every one of them was saying, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know this was there!’” The breezy insouciance that makes balloons ill-suited for jet-age transport, it seems, makes them perfect for appreciating the world below.
“And because, of course, we don’t have a screen or an engine, balloons are fantastic for filming and for photography,” Allie continued, “You also can hear the sounds on the ground because we fly really low. You can talk to people, hear the birds, and even smell the grass.”
When asked what fixed-wing pilots could learn from ballooning, Allie waxed both practical and philosophical. “It’s all about the weather and making good, safe decisions,” she said. “Because we’re so affected by weather, we really have to stand back and think: ‘I’m just a small person here.’
Sometimes you have to shrug your shoulders and say, ‘You know, there’s another day, you can’t force nature.” What else? “I think everybody should try other forms of flight,” Allie continued, “It makes you appreciate what other kinds of aircraft have to deal with. Once you’ve got your PPL, you’ve just started to learn, haven’t you? Ballooning relies so much on personal experience that even with your 1000 hours, you’re still learning.”
What’s next for the world-famous balloonist?
What’s left for the world-record balloonist to learn? “I’ve got 105 countries,” Allie said, “So I’m way behind Phil, who sadly passed away last November, but still has the world record at 127.” She’s wasting no time narrowing the lead. Later this year, Allie plans to take another trip down to South America, where she hopes to log flights in Brazil, Paraguay, and Chile, her last countries in the New World.
After that, she’s planning to travel through Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. In between treks, she’ll continue giving talks for the European Balloon Federation, the British Women Pilots’ Association, and various flight schools, inspiring the next generation of pilots. Like the wind, Allie and her balloon never stop moving.
“Phil was twenty years my senior, so yeah, hopefully there’s some time left for me to catch up with him,” Allie said with a twinkle in her eye. “22 countries? The pressure’s on.”
