“There is nothing more beautiful than flying in a balloon. I have been piloting more than 200 aircrafts but I can say I still feel really happy to fly in a balloon basket.”
From an uncle who was fighting pilot in the Normandie-Niemen WWII squadron, Gérard Feldzer has inherited his passion for the flight. “Eccentric and poetic” pilot, the man is a formidable specialist of aeronautics. He is used to be invited on TV show or radio when something important happens in the sky.
Airline pilot, captain instructor at Air France (20.000 hours of flight), he has crossed the Channel in ultralight aviation and tried to cross the Altantic Ocean with a dirigible accompanied by Nicolas Hulot.
At Chambley, he’s like home, even if he doesn’t pilot balloons. As former president of the French aero-club, he has many friends at LMAB. Between them and balloons, the one who dreamed to become an astronaut is “like a child, amazed by this hundreds of bubbles that flies.”
« The balloon’s takeoff, that’s the earth which spreads out. When you’re in the sky, burners switched off, there’s only silence, like in space. Nature’s law rules. It’s a wonderful show.”
Trained with Russians cosmonauts at Zvyozdny Gorodok (MIR space training center), Jean-François Clervoy flew three times with NASA, as a specialist, on board of Atlantis (1994, 1997) and Discovery (1999). Experienced astronaut, he cumulates 675 hours of flight in space. He is the 5th French who have been to space and the only one from Lorraine.
Member of the European Space Agency’s astronauts team, he has managed, since 2006, Novespace, a subsidiary of the National Centre for Space Studies, specialized in parabolic flights.
Even if he has accomplished several tours around earth, he remains, like his friends Gérard Feldzer and Bertrand Piccard, amazed by the show given at Chambley every two years.
“The greatest danger in life isn’t to take risks, but to live with certainty !”
Since his world tour in a balloon, the first without stopover, realized in 1999 with Brian Jones, Bertrand Picard is a worthy heir of his Swiss family of pioneers, an icon among pilots. A status reinforced by the Solar Impulse experiment, which he was dreaming about since 1999. It became a reality in 2015 with his compatriot André Borschberg. Above all, the psychiatrist is a simple man, deeply humane, who reaches us with his sincerity.
At LMAB Bertrand Piccard is the emblematic guest since the 00s. On the tarmac as much as on the promenade, this adventurer, president of “Winds of Hope” (humanitarian foundation for children) and goodwill ambassador of the United Nations, is a pilot like many of them and everyone can approach and discuss with him.
“ Pilot ? When you’re ready to, you are proposed to. For me, it happened at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, in November 2012. I’ve said yes, multiplied flights between East and West of France, and got my licence.”
Smiling, enthusiast, that’s how Clemence Ohl has been discovered by the team of LMAB. In 2005, she is called “La Mascotte” (the mascot). The nickname remains. Volunteer, in charge of welcoming visitors, she became a team member the next year till LMAB15 and she is now a pilot. One among hundreds of them. Like her godfather before her, who flyed her when she was 8. And for this reason too, Chambley has a special taste for her. That’s where she met her first employer, and a few years later, her partner. “That’s my second family, the one of my heart”, says the young woman who lives now expatriate in the West of France. Nevertheless, she never misses a chance to come and say hello to her instructor, Philippe Buron-Pilâtre, and fly above Lorraine’s landscape, where she got her licence : “It’s so much better up there !”.
« It’s wonderful. All those balloons in the air. It’s magic. And there is those meetings with amazing pilots from all around the world !”
Laure de Coligny has been flying since she was ten and practices competitions. She is ranked 10th and first woman of the French national ranking. Being a woman and a balloon pilot at the same time is unusual. Women who pilots balloons aren’t many, at most fifty in France. Since the beginning of the 00's, Laure is a “friend” of Chambley. She describes it as a major event.
When she pulls the burners, she likes “that feeling of freedom, flying above the Earth and controlling a machine that cannot be totally controlled because it depends on the wind. Fly with the wind is a passion.”
«I have been called a true "Balloonatic" ! My home in Phoenix, Arizona, is literally a Balloon/Giraffe Museum.I even have a small giraffe on the scoop of my balloon.»
Retired teacher, Judy Holt is not a pilot like others. She had her first balloon ride in 1980 in Albuquerque (NM) and a year later she was flying her own balloon! Now, in her 34th year as a pilot, she’s currently flying her 4th balloon - "Desert Drifter”.
Ballooning is a hobby for her and kept her "sane" throughout her 30 plus years of teaching 4th & 5 grade !
2015 will be her 8th time flying at Lorraine Mondial Air Ballons : Judith was there in 1989 for the first edition. In Fraternité 89, she met one of her best friends Hubert VanTuijl from the Netherlands who has become a very good friend and her crew chief whenever she attends LMAB.
