In a recent news article, it was reported that in an apparent prank some idiots released a 24-foot-long unmanned advertising blimp in the LA Basin. It was originally attached to a coffee house, and was just found in Agua Dulce, CA., on Wednesday.

Here’s the kicker. I fly in the LA Basin all the time. We see party balloons almost everyday. I said ‘day’ and I said ‘party’ balloons- That’s what I see the most because it’s day light and from the cockpit you just don’t see 24-foot-long unmanned advertising blimps floating around loose, ever. And I doubt it if I could see a 24-foot-long unmanned advertising blimp at night going over 200 mph in a jet before I hit it.

And so, out of curiosity, I did a little research. I got onto Google Maps, in the ‘My Maps’ section and created a map. I plotted the balloon’s (suspected) path according to the article. After looking at that for a minute, I then plotted the KIMMO arrival into KLAX (using LAT/LONG), a turboprop arrival that takes you in from the Lake Hughes area through a little east of the Burbank area.

The results startled me, because the balloon appeared to cross the path of the arrival. Slightly… As you can see by the diagram, the balloon starts in Canyon Country, CA., where the coffee shop is, and proceeds northeast to Aqua Dulce, CA., where it was recovered. The very beginning of it’s trek is what crossed the arrival. But it’s not just airliners that use that corridor, as general aviation uses it and east of it too at lower altitudes.

No one knows how long the balloon was supposedly airborne. Needless to say, a couple of things are amazing.

#1. The idiots released it in the first place.
#2. Nobody hit it at night in an airplane. Thank God.

~Capt’n Chris

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