17 – Noah’s Ark of the Sky – Ballooning

Corrections:

• The largest hot air balloon to date is not the balloon Per Lindstrand and Sir Richard Branson flew in in their first hot air balloon flight across The Atlantic in 1987. Though the envelope of this balloon was the largest hot air balloon envelope at the time with a volume of 2.29 million cubic feet, Per Lindstrand and Sir Richard Branson broke the record for the largest hot air balloon envelope with their 1991 flight across the Pacific Ocean in the Virgin Otsuka Pacific Flyer. Branson and Lindstrand were accompanied by millionaire Steve Fossett. The Virgin Otsuka Pacific Flyer still holds the record for the largest hot air balloon envelope ever flown, sized at 2.6 million cubic feet.
• In this episode, we stated Richard Heene called news channels before reaching out to the Federal Aviation Administration. The order of Richard Heene’s phone calls, and whether or not he made a call to the Federal Aviation Administration at all is unsubstantiated. During the 2009 Balloon Boy Hoax, the Heene family stated they first called the Federal Aviation Administration, and then called Denver NBC and KUSA-TV. According to initial reports, the Larimer County Sheriff’s office stated “they had no confirmation that Richard Heene actually made the call to the FAA.”
• A few key pieces of information were missing from our depiction of the Balloon Boy Hoax:
  • The Heene family stated the balloon was meant to be tethered.
  • Mayumi Heene’s handwritten notes on the incident illustrate a motive and a plan to carry out the hoax. The notes also indicate the family planned on Falcon hiding in a different location than above the garage.
  • In October 2019, Robert Sanchez with 5280 Magazine (Colorado local publication) interviewed the Heene family. After presenting Richard and Mayumi with her handwritten notes from 2009, Sanchez didn’t hear from the Heenes for two days. When they called him back, Richard and Mayumi seemed to act the same way in their balloon launch video from 2009, which “had been an elaborate ruse,” and Mayumi claimed she “made the whole story up.” Read the whole story here.

See corrections from all episodes here