Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier the autumn of 1784, but the attempt was not launched until after another Frenchman, Jean-Pierre Blanchard, and American companion, Dr John Jeffries, flew across the English Channel in a hydrogen gas balloon on 7 January 1785, from England to France. Despite several attempts, De Rozier and his companion, Pierre Romain, were not able to set off from Boulogne-sur-Mer until 15 June 1785. After making some progress, a change of wind direction pushed them back to land some 5 km from their starting point. The balloon suddenly deflated (without the envelope catching fire) and crashed near Wimereux in the Pas-de-Calais, from
Hot air balloon from downtown Mumbai, India, and landed south in Panchale. The previous record of had been set by Per Lindstrand on June 6, 1988, in Plano, Texas. On January 15, 1991, the 'Virgin Pacific Flyer' balloon completed the longest flight in a hot air balloon when Per Lindstrand (born in Sweden, but resident in the UK) and Richard Branson of the UK flew from Japan to Northern Canada. With a volume of 74,000 cubic meters (2.6 million cubic feet), the balloon envelope was the largest ever built for a hot air craft. Designed to fly in the trans-oceanic jet streams, the