Made Historic Transatlantic Crossing : Balloonist Abruzzo Dies in Plane Crash

Ben Abruzzo, one of the three men who made the first transatlantic balloon crossing, was killed today along with his wife and four other people when the twin-engine plane he was flying crashed near an airport.

The victims were on their way to Aspen, Colo., for a skiing trip.

Police spokesman Sgt. Roy Manfredi said the six victims all were from Albuquerque and included Abruzzo’s wife, Pat.

John Sanders, Federal Aviation Administration operations inspector, said the Cessna aircraft crashed and burned on a frontage road on the east side of Interstate 25 near Coronado Airport.

He said the plane apparently hit the interstate, “bounced across it and came to rest on that frontage road.”

“He was over the freeway, heading toward town. Maybe he tried to circle back and land,” said a witness to the crash.

“It went down and some of the landing gear scattered all over the place,” he said. “The airplane was like wadded up. It was destroyed.”

Abruzzo, 55, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman became the first people to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon, named the Double Eagle II, in 1978. The helium balloon landed near Paris after a flight of about 3,000 miles.

Anderson, 48, and another prominent American balloonist, Don Ida, 49, were killed in West Germany in June, 1983, during the annual Gordon Bennett International Balloon race that started in Paris.

Abruzzo, Newman and two other men crossed the Pacific Ocean in the Double Eagle V in late 1981, becoming the first people ever to cross that ocean in a balloon. The helium-filled craft lifted off from Nagashima, Japan, on Nov. 9 and crash-landed four days later in Northern California during what Newman described at the time as “the worst storm in 20 years.”