Plane Crash Kills Balloonist Who Set 2 Records

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —  Ben Abruzzo, who took part in the first balloon crossings of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, was killed along with his wife and four other persons Monday when a twin-engine plane he was flying crashed just after taking off.

“Everything was engulfed in fire,” said Gary Card, 28, a state Highway Department inspector who saw the Cessna 421 crash near Coronado Airport in north Albuquerque. Card said the plane fell onto Interstate 25, bounced across the freeway, exploded into flames and came to rest 100 yards east of the freeway frontage road west of a mobile home park.

On Way to Skiing Trip

Police Sgt. Roy Manfredi said Abruzzo, who owned the Sandia Tramway and ski area east of Albuquerque, was the pilot. The other victims were identified by Manfredi as Abruzzo’s wife, Pat, Barbara Quant, Bev Mullin, Cynthia Miller and Marsha Martin. All six victims were from Albuquerque and were on their way to a skiing trip in Aspen, Colo., he said.

Manfredi said the plane had just taken off from Coronado Airport when it “experienced some engine difficulty and then looped left to make it back to the airport.”

Dale Horner, Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector, said the cause of the crash had not been determined, but FAA investigators were at the scene. Inspectors from the National Transportation Safety Board in Denver were also called in.

Crossed Atlantic in ’78

Abruzzo, 54, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman became the first persons to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon, named the Double Eagle II, in 1978. The helium balloon landed near Paris after a flight of about 3,000 miles.

Anderson, 48, and another prominent American balloonist, Don Ida, 49, were killed in West Germany in June, 1983, during the annual Gordon Bennett International Balloon race that started in Paris.

Abruzzo, Newman and two other men crossed the Pacific Ocean in the Double Eagle V in late 1981, becoming the first persons ever to cross the Pacific in a balloon. The helium-filled craft lifted off from Nagashima, Japan, on Nov. 9 and crash-landed four days later in Northern California during a storm.