Brian Jones (born 27 March 1947 in Bristol, England) is an English balloonist.
Brian Jones, along with Bertrand Piccard, co-piloted the first successful uninterrupted circumnavigation of the world on board the balloon Breitling Orbiter 3. They set off on 1 March 1999 from Château d'Oex in Switzerland and landed in Egypt after a 45,755 kilometre flight lasting 19 days, 21 hours and 47 minutes.
For this achievement, he received awards including the Harmon Trophy, the Hubbard Medal, the FAI Gold Air Medal and the Charles Green Salver.
Still active in ballooning records, In November 2010 Jones piloted the Esprit Breitling Orbiter as a launch platform for Yves Rossy. Rossy made the first successful attempt to perform loops using a jet-powered flying-wing backpack.
Jones grew up in Knowle, Bristol. He served for 13 years in the Royal Air Force. He is married to Joanna, a balloonist, and has two children. He co-authored the book The Greatest Adventure ISBN 978-0747264439 with Bertrand Piccard.
Famous quotes containing the words brian and/or jones:
“You got an all-out prize fight, you wait ‘til the fight’s over, one guy’s left standing and that’s how you know who’s won.”
—David Mamet, U.S. screenwriter, and Brian DePalma. Al Capone (Robert DeNiro)
“Strange goings on! Jones did it slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight. What he did was butter a piece of toast. We are too familiar with the language of action to notice at first an anomaly: the ‘it’ of ‘Jones did it slowly, deliberately,...’ seems to refer to some entity, presumably an action, that is then characterized in a number of ways.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)