Luxor Hot Air Balloon Crash

[Circadia]

Nineteen tourists, including three Britons, have been killed in a hot air balloon crash near the Egyptian city of Luxor, officials say.The balloon is believed to have caught fire and exploded on Tuesday morning, plunging into a sugar cane field west of Luxor, which is 320 miles (510km) south of the capital, Cairo.
Witnesses described seeing people leaping out of the balloon as it was on fire. The casualties included British, French, Belgian, Hungarian and Japanese nationals and nine tourists from Hong Kong, the Luxor governor, Ezzat Saad, told reporters.
The tragedy is one of the world's worst ballooning accidents and dealt a fresh blow to Egypt's tourism industry, which is reeling after two years of political unrest since protests that led to the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Egypt's civil aviation minister, Wael el-Maadawi, suspended hot air balloon flights and flew to Luxor to lead the investigation into the crash.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We can confirm the tragic deaths of two British nationals and one British resident following a hot air balloon crash in Luxor, Egypt earlier today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...kills-tourists

[Cerys]

Oh wow, sounds pretty bad.
Never would trust those things anyway

RIP

[zombies]

ouch

RIP!

[Catchy]

Eurg, the thought of knowing you were basically going to die as it was on fire... At least it would've been over pretty fast I guess. R.I.P

p.s. never going on a hot air balloon

[Aaron]

Oh wow, such a tragic death.. and as Jake above me said knowing you were going to die while it was on fire wouldn't make the situation any better for them. Would never go on a hot air balloon anyway!

RIP to all those people.

[Ardemax]

What a horrible, horrible incident, R.I.P. to all the deceased. Though it's slightly irrelevant to the thread, I was in Luxor two weeks ago and was offered to go up on a hot air balloon, pretty relieved I didn't...

[iBlueBox]

One of the men who died was actually a former pupil from my secondary school a while back,

R.I.P

[Jurv]

i could never go on one of those things for that particular reason. they don't seem safe at all to me. rest in peace