Two Eagles Balloon Lands Off Mexican Coast

ByEMILY SHAPIRO ABCNews logo
Saturday, January 31, 2015

The pilots behind the Two Eagles Balloon flight over the Pacific Ocean landed off the Baja peninsula in Mexico a day after surpassing the distance record for gas balloons.

Recovery teams picked up American Troy Bradley and Russian Leonid Tiukhtyaev on Saturday morning, the Two Eagles Balloon team said, and took them to shore. The pilots had a "controlled descent to a gentle water landing," about four miles off the coast.

"They are fine, but are being checked out onshore by paramedics as a precaution," according to the Two Eagles Balloon team.

Their trip - which began in Japan - lasted 160 hours, and 38 minutes, besting the absolute world record for time aloft for gas balloons of 137 hours, 5 minutes and 50 seconds. They traveled a total of 6,646 miles, better than the previous record of 5,209 miles.

Earlier in the flight, Bradley told Mission Control he was "not nervous at all about the mission," according to the Two Eagles Balloon team.

Although the two pilots surpassed the mark for duration of gas balloons, the record has not been officially broken. This will determined by the U.S. National Aeronautic Association and FAI after a long process of documentation and review that can take up to several weeks, or even months.

ABC News' Rachel Hawatmeh contributed to this story.

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