Hot Air Balloon Ground Crew

Hot Air Balloon Ground Crew positions immediately available Monday through Friday, with occasional opportunity to fill in on weekends. Our current weekend crew is dedicated and reliable. We are just getting close to "busy season" so it might be sporadic for a couple weeks, but should pick up by mid-June. Basic requirements (non-negotiable):

• Valid Driver License, Clean Driving Record
• Be able to back a trailer
• No Drug use (including Marijuana), Sober
• Not just at work, but generally. Hot Air Ballooning is Federally Regulated Aviation. Safety and situational awareness are of the utmost importance in all that we do. The nature of the responsibility involved in aviation and all its support roles, including ground crew, essentially requires a drug-free lifestyle. Please honestly consider whether this is a good fit for you.
• Willingness and ability to fill out IRS Forms W4 and I9 as an Employee. You'll be issued a W-2 at the end of the tax year.
• Likes early mornings
• We meet approximately one hour before sunrise (earliest meet time is 4:45am, midsummer)
• Punctual and reliable
• we rely on everyone showing up on time to make the flight happen.
• Good personal hygiene
• we interact closely with our passengers (riding in vehicles together)
• Good people skills
• we are sharing a 'once in a lifetime' experience with people
• Willingness and ability to lift and move heavy things
• the balloons and baskets are heavy, so a certain physicality is required.

General Overview We meet approximately an hour before sunrise, get a few things together for the morning and drive out to our launch site with our passengers. Hot Air balloon ground crew helps to set up the balloon and assist in the takeoff, pack up the equipment back onto the trailers, ensure that everything is squared away on the ground, communicate with the pilot via handheld radios during the flight, drive the chase vehicle(s) from our launch site to our landing site (variable every day), assist in the landing and packing up of the balloon, and interact with the passengers throughout portions of the morning. Hot air balloon crew is an essential part of the flight, situational awareness and attentiveness to safety are required throughout the entire morning. There is a 'customer service' component of what we do, since we are spending the morning with our passengers and sharing this once in a lifetime hot air balloon experience with them. Along with this comes the opportunity for tips. It's a fun job doing something interesting but does requires some work. The entire morning usually lasts 4.5-5hrs, sometimes shorter, sometimes a little longer. Any tips we get are shared evenly between everyone out working that morning. Perks include getting to fly in the balloon from time to time, being out in our beautiful Taos landscape for sunrise, meeting people from all over the world. This is a fun way to make supplemental income during a morning time slot that leaves the rest of the day open. It is tourism and weather dependent: we may not fly every day of the week, but are typically out flying most mornings June through October.

Job Type:

Part-time Pay:

$80.00 per day

Work Location:

In person