Why does this page have no numbers?
Because we have not computed them. The site is published as a plan so the shape of the dataset can be reviewed before any figure appears. Every page is noindex until its rows exist.
How often balloon flights actually go ahead, site by site and month by month
A balloon flight is a weather bet. Operators advertise a price; almost none of them advertise the chance the balloon leaves the ground that morning. This page is being built to publish that number.
No site has a flight-odds figure yet, because neither the status records nor the climate normals have been processed.
A counted figure and a modelled figure will never share a column. Each row will say which it is.
Cancellations are the real cost of a balloon ride. A cheap flight in a month with poor odds, booked on the last morning of a trip, is often more expensive than a pricier flight in a month when the balloons go up almost every day, because one of them happens and the other is a refund and a missed morning.
This page will carry one figure per site per month: the share of mornings a flight went ahead. Where a site publishes a daily flight-status record we will count it. Where it does not, we will model it from wind and fog climate normals and label it as a model, with its error, rather than passing it off as a count.
What this page will hold
Nothing on this page is measured yet. These are the fields we will check, where each one comes from, and how often it gets re-checked. No number is published until the first check is done.
Not checked yet
| Field | Source | Re-checked |
|---|---|---|
| Site and month | Editorial list of launch sites | Once a year |
| Share of mornings a flight went ahead, counted | Daily flight-status records published by the site, where they exist and their reuse terms allow it | Twice a year |
| Share of mornings a flight went ahead, modelled | Wind and fog climate normals from national meteorological services | Twice a year |
| Which of the two the row is, and the error on a modelled figure | Stated on every row | With the figure |
| Median standard-flight price for the site | Median of the dated rows on that site’s page | Monthly |
| Expected cost of a flight that actually goes ahead | Computed by us from the median price, the odds and the refund rule | Monthly |
Questions
Is this a forecast?
No. It is a historical share of mornings, by month, and it says nothing about any particular day. We do not forecast a single morning and we will not start.
Do you earn money from the links?
We may, once a programme is live. No booking link on this site is live today, and no programme we join changes which operators are listed or how they are ordered.