Every place on earth worth leaving the ground for. Before breakfast.
What a Cappadocia basket really costs, why Luxor is the cheapest hour of altitude anywhere, which morning the wind will take from you. Reviews of the balloon flights you can actually book.
Four mornings that make the alarm clock worth it.
The flights most travellers come back talking about, on four different continents. What each one costs and what the basket is actually like.
01The famous oneCappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal BalloonGoreme at first light, when a hundred envelopes go up together. The picture everyone else on the ridge is trying to take.
02The cheap altitudeHot Air Balloon Ride in Luxor Egypt with Transfers IncludedAn hour over the Valley of the Kings and the green strip of the Nile, for less than a Cappadocia transfer costs.
03The pyramid runBalloon flight + pick up in CDMX + Breakfast in Cave + PyramidsLift-off beside the Pyramid of the Sun, then breakfast underground in a lava cave. Pickup from Mexico City is around four in the morning.
04The soft landingBalloon Flight, Berber Breakfast & CertificateDown in the palm groves outside Marrakech, into a Berber tent for bread and mint tea, with a certificate you did not ask for.
Sunrise is not a nice extra. It is the whole flight.
Balloons fly at first light because that is when the air stops moving. An hour after sunrise the thermals start and the baskets are back on the trailer. Every flight below leaves in the dark and lands with the day still cold.
Six places that fly almost every morning.
A volcanic valley in Anatolia, the west bank at Luxor, the avenue of the dead north of Mexico City, the Atlas foothills, a desert an hour from Dubai and the one skyline in the world you are allowed to float over. Pick a place, then pick a morning.
Cappadocia sells three different mornings. Only one of them flies.
The valley launches more baskets than anywhere on earth, and the listings blur together: a standard hour, a longer deluxe hour in a smaller basket, and a ground tour that never leaves the rock. Here is what separates them, and what each costs before the hotel adds its cut.
The balloon flights more travellers book than any others.
Every flight we have reviewed →Eight baskets with the longest queue behind them, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Balloon Flight, Berber Breakfast & Certificate
Review of Marrakech’s sunrise balloon flight, Atlas Mountain views, Berber breakfast, transfers, practical tips, and value at $113.
From · $113
Read our review →
2
Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal Balloon
from $133
3
Early Morning 40-Minute Balloon Flight
from $123
4
Balloon flight + Breakfast in cave + Pyramids + Pick up CDMX.
from $172
5
Balloon flight + pick up in CDMX + Breakfast in Cave + Pyramids
from $169
6
Goreme Hot Air Balloon Flight at Sunrise
from $142
7
Balloon Flight + Cave Breakfast + Pick Up from CDMX or We Fly
from $166
8
Hot Air Balloon Ride in Luxor Egypt with Transfers Included
from $75
Luxor is the cheapest hour of altitude in the world.
Fifty-five dollars puts you over Hatshepsut’s temple, the Valley of the Kings and a green ribbon of farmland with desert on both sides. Half the flights are sold as an add-on to a Nile cruise, which is why so many baskets go up from the west bank at once.
- 1Hot Air Balloon Ride in Luxor Egypt with Transfers Includedfrom $75
- 24-Days Nile Cruise From Aswan To Luxor including Abu Simbel and Hot Air Balloonfrom $349
- 34-Day 3-Night Nile Cruise from Aswan to Luxor&Abu Simbel+Balloonfrom $340
An hour in a basket costs anything from $30 to $600.
Every flight on the site, grouped by what you pay. The gap is not about the balloon. It is about how many people share the basket, and how much breakfast comes after.
Luxor and the Egyptian west bank, Pamukkale day trips, the tethered rides and the ground-based watching tours.
The standard Cappadocia hour, Teotihuacan with a cave breakfast, Marrakech with the Berber tent.
Dubai with falconry, the Yarra Valley and Melbourne skyline, Napa, and any basket you have to yourself.
Three sights that exist for about forty minutes a day.
You can walk into a temple and drive to a viewpoint. You cannot get level with a fleet of a hundred envelopes, or look down the spine of a pyramid avenue, any other way.
The Goreme fleet
Volcanic ash laid down three rock layers of different hardness, and ten thousand years of rain carved the soft one out from under the hard one. The result is a valley of cones, and about a hundred and fifty balloons licensed to fly over it. Take-off is staggered by a few minutes per operator, so from a basket in the middle you are surrounded on every side at eye level.
- 1Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal Balloon★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6,829 reviews
- 2Goreme Hot Air Balloon Flight at Sunrise★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,924 reviews
- 3Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride/ Turquaz Balloons★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,330 reviews
Over the tombs
Sixty-three royal tombs are cut into a dry valley behind Hatshepsut’s terraces, and from the ground it reads as bare limestone. From four hundred metres up the plan of the whole necropolis appears at once, the cuttings, the guard paths and the line where irrigation stops dead and the desert starts.
- 1Hot Air Balloon Ride over the Valley of the Kings★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 250 reviews
- 2Hot Air Balloon Ride Over Temple of Hatshepsut★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 185 reviews
- 3West Bank Hot Air Balloon Ride with Hotel Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 169 reviews
The avenue of the dead
Two kilometres of ceremonial road runs dead straight between the Pyramid of the Moon and the Pyramid of the Sun, and it is fifteen degrees off north for reasons nobody has settled. Balloons launch from the fields beside it at around six, which is the only vantage point where you can see the axis and the whole grid of platforms lined up along it.
- 1Teotihuacan Hot Air Balloon Flight from Mexico City / Volare★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,262 reviews
- 2Balloon flight + pick up in CDMX + Breakfast in Cave + Teotihuacan★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,905 reviews
- 3Balloon Flight with Breakfast in Cave and Pyramids of Teotihuacan★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,498 reviews
Four things that decide whether you actually fly.
Ballooning is the most weather-dependent thing you can book on a holiday, and the rules are not written on the booking page. None of these are worth finding out at four in the morning.
- 01Wind cancels, not rainThe go or no-go call is made at the launch field an hour before lift-off, and surface wind over about 10 knots grounds everything. Operators rebook you for the next morning or refund; a flight booked for your last day has nowhere to move to.
- 02You stand for the whole hourThere are no seats. You climb in over the side of a basket about chest high and stay on your feet, and the landing can be a bump and a slide. Most operators set a minimum age around six and refuse late pregnancy.
- 03The basket is sharedTwenty to twenty-eight people in one basket is normal in Cappadocia and Luxor. A compartment of four to eight costs roughly double, and having it to yourself costs several times that.
- 04Pickup is in the darkHotel collection runs from about three thirty to five depending on the season and the drive. Anything sold without a transfer expects you at the field under your own steam, before dawn.
Four baskets that sell out before you land.
Balloon capacity is fixed by the number of envelopes an operator owns and the number of mornings the weather allows. These four run out first, and the queue for the next flyable day is already there.
- 01Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal BalloonCappadocia caps the number of balloons airborne per morning, and the operators with the best safety record fill their manifest weeks out in spring and autumn.
- 02Teotihuacan Hot Air Balloon Flight from Mexico City / VolareOne launch window, a fixed number of baskets, and the whole of Mexico City two hours down the road. Weekend mornings go first.
- 03Yarra Valley Sunrise Balloon Flight with GoPro PhotosMelbourne is one of very few cities in the world where balloons may overfly the centre, and the permits limit how many go up. Champagne-breakfast slots book out over summer.
- 04Balloon Flight, Berber Breakfast & CertificateThe Marrakech operators fly small fleets and pause through the hottest weeks. The flights that end in a Berber tent are the first to close.
By place, where balloons actually launch
By kind of flight: shared, private, tethered or watched
Six launch fields, six different flying seasons.
The newest balloon flights on the site.
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Balloon flight in la Garrotxa with transfer from Barcelona
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Hot-Air Balloon Flight Experience with Snacks & Wine
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Luxor Day Trip with Sunrise Hot Air Balloon & Felucca
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3 Days Nile River Cruise & Hot Air Balloon Ride
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Hot Air Balloon Flight with Stunning Views of the Alps
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Antalya to Pamukkale: Day Tour W/Optional Hot Air Balloon
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