History of transport balloons filled with hot air were used in the first half of the 19th century and saw considerable action in several mid-century wars, most notably the American Civil War, where balloons provided observation during the Siege of Petersburg. Apart from some scattered reference in ancient and medieval records, resting on slender evidence and in need of interpretation, the earliest clearly verifiable human flight took place in Paris in 1783, when Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes went in a hot air balloon invented by the Montgolfier brothers. The Wright brothers made the first sustained, controlled and powered heavier-than-air
2016 Lockhart hot air balloon crash pilot's "pattern of poor decision-making" that led him to launch the balloon (on a day when other balloon operators cancelled their planned flights because of low cloud and fog), to continue the flight into fog and above clouds, and then to descend near clouds which made it difficult to see and avoid obstacles. The pilot's medical conditions (depression and ADHD), the prescription drugs he was taking, and the fact that balloon pilots do not need a medical certificate even for commercial flights were contributing factors leading to the accident. On August 1, Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides, whose