A group of hot air balloonists were recently granted permission to fly over the East Midlands Airport in order to take photography of the site from the skies.
The Nottingham and Derby Hot Air Balloon Club, the organisation behind the photos, requested special permission to take a hot air balloon flight over the airport once it was revealed that the site would be intermittently closed for refurbishment and the construction of a new runway.
This was a great opportunity for members of the club to take their hot air balloons over the airport, as the airspace around the site is restricted to air traffic flying in and out of the Midlands-based hub.
The airport is currently closing intermittently for crucial runway repairs every weekend, commencing on the Saturday through to Monday evening. This work will be carried out over the next few weeks and is due to be completed before Christmas, becoming fully operational again on December 19.
To obtain such rare aerial shots, five hot air balloons took off from a vacant field to the north of the site, close to the small market town of Castle Donnington. The hour-long flight took the balloonists over the closed airport runways before landing in Woodhouse Eaves, a village located 10 miles from the airport and to the south of Loughborough.
Robin Macey, the balloon club’s publicity officer, provided the photographs and told the Nottingham Post about the experience, saying:
“This was a wonderful opportunity- I’ve been ballooning for 30 years and flown more than 300 times and this was a very interesting flight.”
Once the airport has completed a new civilian runway, it will become the sixth longest in the UK at 1.8 miles long.
