Hot Air Balloon Safety Rule Finally Enacted

Rep. Lloyd Doggett speaks before Congress about the tragic balloon crash that killed 16 people in Lockhart (Courtesy of Lloyd Doggett's office)

Rep. Lloyd Doggett and a range of people connected to the hot air balloon tragedy that claimed 16 lives in Lockhart over six years ago celebrated last month as the Federal Aviation Administration implemented a new rule requiring commercial hot air balloon pilots to hold medical certificates.

The FAA rule has been years in the making. The Lockhart crash in July 2016 was the deadliest balloon crash in U.S. history and the country's deadliest aviation disaster since 2009, killing 15 passengers and the pilot. In the following months, the National Transportation Safety Board found that the FAA's failure to require pilots to have a medical certificate was a factor in the tragedy and urged the FAA to adopt a rule subjecting them to similar medical certificate requirements that other commercial airline pilots must meet.

But the FAA, which was being lobbied by a trade agency for balloon owners, didn't budge. That left Doggett, who said he occasionally used to see the hot air balloon as he drove on I-35, intent on passing legislation to force the change. In 2018, that's exactly what the House did – passing an amendment to that year's FAA Reauthorization Act.

The fact that it took the FAA some four years to implement the rule was a source of ongoing frustration for Doggett, who linked the delay to another balloon disaster last year when an impaired pilot crashed into power lines and killed himself and four passengers in Albuquerque. "I think basically the FAA did not want to do this, and they drug it out as long as they possibly could," Doggett said.

And this isn't the only issue where the FAA has dragged its feet implementing a congressionally mandated rule in recent years. Doggett pointed to a similarly long delay in implementing a rule requiring extended rest periods for flight attendants as emblematic of bigger issues in an agency he described as oriented more toward the concerns of the companies it regulates than workers and consumers.

"This is not unusual," Mike Slack, an Austin-area aviation attorney who advised Doggett on the bill, said of the FAA delay. "I think the public would be shocked to see the number of instances over the years where the FAA has not taken action ... with unsafe situations." An FAA spokesperson declined to answer specific questions for this story.

Federal officials don't typically check pilots for their medical certificate before each flight, so some pilots could continue to fly without the proper licensure. But Slack thinks the added requirement will have a chilling effect on irresponsible pilots by raising the stakes should they be caught flying without a certificate. In any case, he said, the new rule makes sense on its own merits. "There was no reason why hot air balloon pilots should not have a second-class medical [certificate] for commercial operations when a fixed-wing pilot needed to have a second-class medical for commercial operations," Slack said. "It just never made sense."