LONDON � Coast guards are hunting for a pair of missing American balloonists last detected piloting their craft over the Adriatic Sea in rough weather, officials said Wednesday.
Richard Abruzzo and Carol Rymer Davis were participating in the 54th Gordon Bennett Gas Balloon Race, an annual race in which teams of balloonists try to see who can fly the farthest from a set point on a maximum of about 1,000 cubic meters (35,300 cubic feet) of gas.
Abruzzo is the son of famed balloonist Ben Abruzzo, who was part of the first team to cross the Pacific Ocean by balloon, in 1981, and was killed in a small airplane crash in 1985.
Italian coast guards said a search was under way for the balloon, one of 20 that set off Saturday from the English coastal city of Bristol. Spokesman Lt. Massimo Maccheroni, said the last signal received from the balloon's GPS was at 8 a.m. local time (0600GMT) Wednesday. The signal showed the craft was 13 miles (21 kilometers) off the Gargano coast in the Adriatic Sea.
He said helicopters, military aircraft and three boats were taking part in the search. A ground search on the coast was also under way.
Conditions in the area were reported to be poor, with rough seas and thunderstorms.
Abruzzo and Davis have competed together in the past, winning the 2006 America's Challenge gas balloon race by traveling 1,478 miles (2,378 kilometers) from the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
Richard Abruzzo's sister-in-law, Sandra Abruzzo, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, said she had been told the balloonists had suffered "an issue with the electrical" components in the balloon, and speculated that the loss of contact could possibly be related to that.
Garth Sonnenberg, also of Albuquerque and a friend of Abruzzo's since childhood, said he'd heard they had radio issues throughout the flight. "We're hoping that it's a good possibility that it's just a radio problem," he said.
Friends said that ballooning is in Abruzzo's blood � his father and two other Albuquerque residents, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman, made the first successful balloon flight over the Atlantic in a helium-filled balloon in 1978, landing in France after a flight of 137 hours.
___
Associated Press writer Sue Major Holmes in Albuquerque, N.M., contributed to this report
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment