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‘I’m at one with the air’

THERE ARE VERY few people who feel comfortable dangling 20,000 feet above the ground in a wicker basket, but for Mike Howard, it’s like home.

The pilot and hot-air balloon enthusiast has set world records, travelled the world, and performed stunts that may seem either daring or reckless to the rest of us.

The Guinness World Record holder decided to make his mark in the world of competitive ballooning, so he conjured up a plan to get his name in the infamous book.

“To me ballooning is far safer than driving a car,” he claimed.

High up in the atmosphere, he became the first man to walk between two balloons at a record altitude, and this barely made him flinch.

He then decided to fulfill every child’s dream of being carried away by balloons – 1,000 to be exact – with nothing more than a harness attachment, radio, and gun.

“You have a harness and you connect all the balloons to your harness. You fill up all the balloons, tie it to a piece of string and connect yourself,” he said.

After five missions completed under his belt, he recalls the first attempt that went terribly wrong.

“I have the gun to shoot at the balloons once I reach the right altitude. I got stuck at a certain altitude so we had to get the helicopter that was filming us me to push the balloon's back down,” he said.

“The first time we did the stunt we ran out of balloons, so we had to substitute it with smaller toy balloons.”

Ballooning since he was a child, Howard has used his passion to help environmentalists make media headlines.

“I once flew a flight for Greenpeace. We were flying over a factory with the highest CO2 emissions in Europe,” he said.

“Everything done with Greenpeace is very secret and nobody’s allowed to know about it. So we hid in this field and executed the balloon mission.”

Howard is to hot-air balloons what Evel Knievel is to motor sports. Call him an enthusiast or borderline adrenaline junkie; he sees no other way to live.

“I don't think I take any risks, I think I take calculated chances. A risk is something you do without having all the facts… but we look at what we’re trying to achieve and we try to eliminate as much of the danger as we can,” he claimed.

“There’s always going to be an element of danger, because it’s like if you’re driving down the road and you have control of your car but you don't have control of anybodies else's car – there’s more there. But when I’m doing my stunts we have absolute control of our little scenario, yes there is an element of risk, but it’s so far less than if you’re walking down the street where there’s so many other variables that you can’t control.”

So what does it feel like to float serenely through the clouds, with a birds eye view of the ground that few get to appreciate?

“It’s hard to describe because it’s surreal. You are standing in a wicker basket and the world is moving below you and there’s no sensation of movement. I’m at one with the air,” he said.

“I fly very sophisticated airplanes for a living. Most pilots are not actually flying the aircraft, they are monitoring the systems. Ballooning doesn't get any more back to basics for me.”

But ballooning brought Howard more than an exciting life; it helped him find his wife Renee. Through a chance meeting at a festival, the duo has championed the sport across the globe hoping to increase interest and awareness.

“The only bad thing about the balloon flights,” she said, “is the first 3000 ft. He’s wearing a parachute and if he’s below 3000 ft he doesn't have time for his parachute to deploy. After that if it all goes wrong, it’s just a sky dive.”

“In all the stunts that we do, there’s no doubt that there is an element of danger. I don't see the danger as much as other people do,” Howard continues.

“But I have three key people who have worked on all the stunts. Renee, my father, and my best friend. They’re the people that say ‘You need to stop and think about this’.”

Brave, uninhibited, and adventurous, the family has built a close bond around their air endeavours.

“Our long-term goal is to create a national team here in Dubai,” he said.

“Dubai wants to be the biggest and best at everything; they want to hold the Olympics, they want to hold the World Cup… so we want to be part of that.”

kadry@khaleejtimes.com