Of the many routes to experiencing Balloon Fiesta, our favorite has to be volunteering for the event. It opens many doors not available to the public, and significantly lowers the financial bar for participation!
How Do I Become a Volunteer?
Volunteering for the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta is as simple as navigating to the festival’s web page and selecting the volunteering menu. From there, you can apply for any available position. They have positions across all trades including hospitality, shuttle drivers, setup crew, and vendors.
If you want to volunteer to crew, it’s a little more complicated, but still a simple process. In past years, they had an online signup; however, now it looks to be all in-person. We signed up online for the 2024 show. When we reported on the registration day to find out who our pilot would be, they had us re-fill out the release forms and waivers. We happened to arrive at the same time as the pilot of Frankboy. We needed a balloon; he needed a crew. The rest is history!
The Perks of Volunteering
There are many perks to volunteering; some are universal, some are up to the position, or pilot if crewing.
- Free access to the field. Volunteers and Crew members get passes to get on the field every session of the event.
- Free Breakfast. Pilots give their crews a button that gets them access to the breakfast buffet. Other volunteers will have a lanyard ID which accesses a different area. On the crew side the lines are long, but move quickly. There is usually a hot dish, like green chili chowder or waffles, with an assortment of other packaged foods like mini muffins, doughnuts, cereals, and snack bars. We found it best to grab some of everything and pocket what we didn’t eat for a lunch snack later.
- Tickets to an exclusive zoo day barbecue.
- For crew, a chance to ride in a balloon! This is fully up to the discretion of the pilots, and they may have contractual obligations to fly press, influencers, or other VIPs. However, if you impress your pilot, they may go out of their way to get you up.
- Reduced cost and up to free RV camping for non-crew volunteers.
Responsibilities of a Balloon Crew
We can’t speak to the other positions, but crewing a balloon is not hard work. A little heavy lifting, but otherwise fairly simple. Most balloon teams will have a pilot and a crew chief. Both of them will give you more exact instructions on what to do and when. The basic steps are setting up the basket, laying out the envelope, cold inflation, hot inflation, liftoff, and recovery.
Setup
Start by unloading the envelope, cold inflation fan, and basket from the recovery vehicle. This can be one of the 3 “heavy lift” times. While these flying machines use hot air to fly, and necessarily need to be built lightly, they are easily a couple of hundred pounds, with the baskets weighing in around the same. Once the envelope, in its carrying bag, is unloaded and the basket is positioned, the crew will start to lay out the envelope flat on the ground. This can either be fairly simple or very complex with “special” shaped balloons.
Inflation
Once the envelope is laid out and connected to the basket, a gas-powered fan is used to fill the envelope with air. This is a four-person job. Two people need to stand at the throat of the envelope and hold it open for the fan. A third person holds the “crown line,” a rope that connects to the top of the envelope and prevents the balloon from whipping around if there is any wind. The last person stands guard at the fan, keeping people from walking into it or too close.
When the pilot gets clearance from the Zebras to “go hot,” they start to heat the air in the envelope using the burners on the basket. At first, the basket is on its side, but as the envelope gets hotter, it will slowly start to rise up and stand the basket up! The two people holding the throat open need to let go quickly, then hold onto the basket to keep the balloon from rising prematurely. The crown line operator continues to stabilize the balloon as it rises, only approaching the basket when the pilot beckons them forward.
Once the Zebras give the pilot the go-ahead to take off, everyone lets go, the safety tethers are released, and the pilot gives a full burn, while people cheer them on.
Chase and Recovery
After the balloon is up and away, the crew needs to pack up the chase vehicle with the cold inflation fan and the envelope bag. Once the pilot has a good idea about where they are going, which is totally wind dependent, they will radio the crew chief, and the chase is on!
Following all traffic rules, the chase crew will follow the balloon and eventually rendezvous with it. Hopefully it landed in an easily accessible field. Once there, the pilot will deflate the envelope while someone pulls the crown line in the direction the crew chief wants the envelope to fall. Once the envelope is down, everyone works together to press out all the air from the balloon, then carefully fold up the envelope and repack it into its transportation bag. The basket and envelope will be reloaded into the chase vehicle, and everyone will return to the field.
Language Barriers Aren’t Insurmountable
We crewed for “Frankboy,” a Frankenstein’s monster-based special shape balloon, owned and operated by Bahia Balonismo from Santo Antônio de Jesus, Brazil. While we eventually became a well-oiled crew, we did have to overcome some pretty significant language barriers as our pilot and crew chief spoke mostly Portuguese, and we, though learning Spanish, only really spoke English. Through charades, Google Translate, and repetition, we became so valuable to our pilot that he gave us many gifts, and even took the kids up 3 times! On the last day of the festival, the pilot made a special extra flight so that Dad could fly as well! While they asked us many times if we’d come back the next year, we sadly had to decline, as it’s just not something we could afford to do every year.
However you choose to take in the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, whether as a volunteer, crew, or guest, it’s sure to be a memorable experience that will keep you excited for years to come.