The British Cable and Wireless balloon floats on the sea, 125 kilometers (200 miles) off Omaezaki, Japan, Sunday

March 7, 1999
Web posted at: 1:31 p.m. EST (1831 GMT)

TOKYO (CNN) -- Once again, an attempt to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon has ended with a dramatic sea rescue, after two British balloonists went down in the Pacific Ocean near Japan Sunday.

Meanwhile, an Anglo-Swiss ballooning team cruised high above the Arabian Sea, becoming the only competitor currently in the race to set one of aviation's last milestones.

A Japanese military helicopter plucked Andy Elson, 45, and Colin Prescot, 48, from the Pacific Ocean Sunday morning. Elson and Prescot made it 18 days into their nonstop journey around the world before bad weather forced them to descend.

"We were able to fly the balloon about 100 feet above the water until the rescue service arrived, and it was fairly calm," Elson said. "But there were thunderstorms moving into the area ... so if we had waited another two hours, it would have been very dangerous."

Elson and Prescot began their flight in the Cable and Wireless balloon from southern Spain.

Their effort was the eighth attempt by balloon teams to fly nonstop around the world since January 1998.

Still aloft is the Breitling Orbiter 3, which was over the Arabian Sea on Sunday.

Elson is pulled to safety after he and Prescot jumped into the sea

The Orbiter's pilots, Switzerland's Bertrand Piccard and Britain's Brian Jones, left Switzerland on March 1 with an advantage that Elson and Prescot did not have: permission to cross Chinese airspace, which they received in February.

China had banned balloon flights across its territory after a December dispute with British tycoon Richard Branson. Branson's craft strayed into forbidden airspace in China during its failed around-the-world attempt.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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