Business Soars for Hot-Air Balloon Firm

Sid Cutter, known around here as Mr. Balloon, was first lofted into hot-air-ballooning skies in 1971 when he bought one as a birthday present for his mother, then 62.

“I got hooked on balloons right off the bat,” he says. “It has been all balloons ever since. I’m still up there floating through the air at least three times a week and loving every minute.”

Cutter, 50, is credited with founding hot-air ballooning in Albuquerque, the acknowledged hot-air balloon capital of the world. He founded the city’s Hot-Air Ballooning Club, whose 400 members make it the largest in the world, and he launched the annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the largest of its kind.

He’s also owner of the World Balloon Corp., a sort of one-stop shopping center for balloon enthusiasts. The company, which in good years has annual sales of $1 million, boasts another “world’s-largest”--a 15,000-square-foot building that is the biggest single facility devoted to ballooning.

More than two centuries after the first balloon flight in France, there are about 3,500 hot-air balloons in the United States and nearly 8,000 pilots, Cutter estimates.

Easy to Fly

A hot-air balloon, he says, is the easiest thing in the world to fly. “All it takes is 10 hours of lessons, including a one-hour solo, and an FAA written test to obtain a pilot’s license,” he says. Lessons run $600 if the customer provides his own balloon, or $1,500 if it belongs to World Balloon Corp.

World Balloon sells new models from $9,595 to $16,465. Cutter also buys and sells used balloons and accepts them as trade-ins; a used outfit may sell for as little as $3,200, including the balloon, gondola and propane burner. Many are bought by partners, Cutter says. “It’s cheaper than a boat,” he points out.

But there’s more to Cutter’s company than sales, repair, lessons and giving balloon rides. He dispatches his pilots--as many as 20 in a peak year--on high-flying advertising campaigns: seven-story-high, hot-air-filled aerial billboards that carry promotional messages across the United States and to many parts of the world.

Aerial campaigns in recent years have been staged for companies and products including Anheuser-Busch beers, Westinghouse elevators, Black Angus restaurants, General Telephone, ABC Television, National Geographic magazine, Wang computers, Dreyer’s ice cream, and the Army, Air Force and Navy.

Beer Bottle Balloon

More recently, World Balloon pilots flew a 129-foot by 36-foot hot-air rig in the shape of a giant bottle advertising Labatt’s beer.

And one of World Balloon Corp.’s fleet of six specially designed racing balloons participated in the opening ceremonies of the 1980 Winter Olympics.

World Balloon has also helped design and fly balloons in research and development projects for Lockheed and Sandia Laboratories. Cutter’s company designed and built two thermal airships--the world’s largest--each 175 feet long, 50 feet in diameter, and 27,000 cubic feet bigger than the Goodyear blimp.

Cutter, one of the top balloon racers in the world, originated and produced the first two biennial World Hot-Air Balloon Championships in 1973 and 1975, attracting balloonists from two dozen nations. The event has been staged in Europe as well as America since then.

The Albuquerque balloon fiesta attracted 14 balloons its first year in 1972. So far this year, more than 500 have signed up for the Oct. 5-13 event. “It became so big and took up so much of my time that I turned it over to the city, which has put it on ever since,” Cutter says.

He was a Beechcraft distributor in Arizona and New Mexico for years before getting into ballooning, he says. But the antique form of aviation had a much greater appeal. “It’s like floating through the air on a magic carpet,” he says.

“Ballooning is a sport for the entire family,” Cutter adds. “Toddlers go up. So do 80- and 90-year-olds. I sold a balloon to an 83-year-old man and his 73-year-old wife three years ago. They’re out flying every chance they get.”