Balloon Damaged by Frost; Trip From Japan Canceled

A trans-Pacific balloon flight from Japan to California was scrubbed 30 minutes before takeoff Saturday when frost damage caused a section of the balloon fabric to separate as the sky ship was being filled with hot air.

Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Atlantic Airways, said he and his flying partner, Swedish balloonist Per Lindstrand, might “end up in the Pacific” instead of in America if they took off in the damaged balloon.

When Branson announced the cancellation, disappointment filled a Santa Monica Airport hangar, where a small crowd of Virgin Atlantic Airways executives and flight coordinators had gathered to view the takeoff via closed-circuit television from Miyakonojo, Japan.

“We’re just sick. We’re in shock,” said Candace Block of Vic Olesen and Partners Inc., the Los Angeles advertising firm that represents Virgin Atlantic. The airline is scheduled to begin service in May from Los Angeles to London.

“Well, that’s that,” said Christian Flood, an English public relations executive who represents the flight sponsor, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Moments earlier, Flood said he couldn’t wait for the balloon to get up, explaining “this project has taken two weeks of my life.”

The Santa Monica group said the pilots probably would try the flight again in two months. It would take that long, Flood said, to make a new balloon.

The balloon is 19 stories tall when it is inflated and would be 17 miles long if its three layers of synthetic fabric were stretched out.

Two years ago the adventurers set a record crossing the Atlantic in the “Virgin Flyer” but had to be plucked from the Irish Sea by helicopter when they were forced to ditch the balloon in the ocean after touching down briefly in Northern Ireland.

The Pacific trip was to be 6,200 miles, twice as long as the trip two years ago from the United States to Great Britain. The trip was to have taken three to five days.