Louis Blériot of 1909. Like some of the other prizes offered by the paper, it was widely seen as nothing more than a way to gain cheap publicity: the Paris newspaper "Le Matin" commenting that there was no chance of the prize being won. The English Channel had been crossed by an unmanned hydrogen balloon in 1784 and a manned crossing by Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries followed in 1785. Blériot, who intended to fly across the Channel in his Type XI monoplane, had three rivals for the prize, the most serious being Hubert Latham, a French national of English extraction flying
2012 Ljubljana Marshes hot air balloon crash Civil Aviation Agency reported on 27 August 2012 that commercial hot air balloon flights were banned temporarily. The duration of the ban was not given, but the balloon crash was cited as the reason for the ban. Throughout the next year, all involved parties coordinated proposals for stricter rules, which were accepted, and new licenses were granted again starting in August 2013. In the meantime, several operators closed because they were prevented from selling flights, while the remaining ones faced severely reduced sales even after the ban was lifted. In their report, official accident investigators accused the pilot of using