Turkey News: Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Crash Injures 49, Mostly Tourists

Nearly 50 people, many of them tourists, suffered injuries Tuesday in Cappadocia, Turkey, after three hot air balloons were forced to make bumpy emergency landings due to untenable wind conditions, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

The 49 passengers injured on the balloons were mostly European and Chinese. Cappadocia is a popular travel destination in central Turkey known for its unusual volcanic rock formations and rock-caved churches.

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The balloons were giving the tourists a bird’s-eye view of the city’s geological wonders when winds suddenly picked up and pilots were forced to make a hard landing. Nine of the 49 people were who were hurt suffered broken bones, and others were treated for minor injuries and later left the hospital, according to the AP.

One of the pilots of the balloons told the state-run Dogan News Agency that the incident occurred just after they left the ground when the balloons “drifted out of control.”

He assured reporters the crashes weren’t caused by errors by any of the pilots but that there was “a departure from the meteorological data” followed by sudden “winds of rain.”

Cappadocia is located roughly 178 miles south of the Turkish capital city of Ankara. One website offering hot air balloon tours over Cappadocia, which has not been reported to have been involved in Tuesday’s incident, describes the experience as seeing a “landscape that you will have never witnessed before in your life.”

“You will gently drift over the fairy chimneys, through valleys scattered with pigeon houses, over orchards and vineyards,” the website reads in part.

A Danish tourist was killed on Feb. 18 while hot air ballooning in Cappadocia when weather conditions similarly caused his pilot to make a bumpy landing. Benny Karl Jensen, 54, fell out of his air balloon after letting go of one of the handles inside in a moment of “absent-mindedness,” Hurriyet Daily News reported Feb. 18.