Primagaz.
1 000 flying hours and still going strong

Peter and Irene were here in Kubicek's factory in Brno recently and delighted to report that their 210,000 cu ft Primagaz balloon, OE-ZZZ, had just completed its 1001^st flying hour. The balloon, which spends its life flying passengers in Styria, works hard for its living and has accumulated these hours in 7 years as a ride balloon, including many high altitude crossings of the Alps. This is one of the first of our balloons to pass the 1,000 hour mark but we know that there is another one in Turkey. There will be more 1,000 hour Kubicek envelopes but we are a relatively young manuacturer and few of our balloons have had the chance to get there yet.

Basic info about the envelope Year of production: 2000 Serial number: 131 Size: BB60 (6.000 m3, 210.000 cuft) Registration: OE-ZZZ Artwork: Primagaz Flight hours: 1001:45 (2. 11. 2007) Next annual inspection at: 1062:45

This is a letter that we received from Irene Flaggl earlier in the year:

Dear all,
As you know, the old Primagaz has passed the annual inspection with 970h again. This balloon is (beside the parachute) completely from the original fabric. Even at the rotations vent everything is original. Of course there are same repairs on the envelope, but only small items. No lines, no pullys, no loadtapes has been changed.

At the moment the envelope is in the factory. Don´t worry, only for small repairs!

The inspector was Niki Binder (Cameron Dealer in Austria).

And this ballon is not an exception:
The old "Kleine Zeitung" (more than 1000 hours) is also still flying in Turkey.
And the others (for example):
OE-ZAG - BB60 - s/n 223 - 2002 - 520 hours
OE-ZAG - BB37 - s/n 122 - 1999 - 605 hours
OE-ZAW - BB60 - s/n 153 - 2001 - 620 hours
are all in good condition! Still flying and passing the annual checks without any troubles.
We have now 17 Kubicek envelopes (build between 1999 and now). All of them are full airworthness! None of these envelopes has ever been grounded by an inspector due to airworthness reasons.

Kind regards
Irene

The most recent page of OE-ZZZ's log book:

There can be no better proof of the quality and long levity of Kubicek polyester fabric than these high hour balloons built entirely from regular fabric - no Hyperlast, hyperlight or hyper-anything-else in the top of them.

And just to add to the proof of our fabric quality we have an airship based in Russia that now has over 1,000 hours of flight time. This is quite exceptional. If commercial balloons have a hard time then airships have an impossible life.

We are delighted to be able to manufacture such exceptional balloons. We wish many more safe and happy flying hours to this and all our other balloons.

See also:

• Last pages from (already 3^rd!) logbook [PDF, 899 kB]
• Brochure  about Kubicek fabric [PDF, 990 kB, german]
• Press release [PDF, 1.03 MB]