How long is the flight?

Most passenger flights are about an hour long. This is an industry wide standard with several reasons behind the length of the flight. Our primary reason for only flying an hour is fuel. Most pilots carry 40 gallons of propane on board while doing commercial flights. When a balloon runs out of fuel it will land on whatever it is over! A smart pilot of course will never allow a balloon to run below 25% of their total take-off fuel. Should they be in a low fuel situation any decent pilot will be very close to the ground. During an average passenger flight most pilots will burn between 20 and 30 gallons.

Besides having limited fuel pilots prefer to keep flights to an hour so that the winds are predictable. Once it starts to get hot out balloons become a lot less efficient, burn more fuel and run hotter as well. There is also the concern of thermals and switching winds making the flight path difficult to predict. The name of the game in ballooning is safety. Hour long flights make it just that much safer to safely predict the entire flight path and plan.