Jonathan Tyrrell

Jonathan has had a keen interest in Hot Air Ballooning since his father joined a local balloon club in 1991 and spent most summers as a child either flying in or retrieving the club balloon (G-BSMK). Later, taking a wider interest in aviation, he decided to get his fixed wing Private Pilot’s Licence, training whilst studying for his A-Levels and gaining the licence in 2008. A couple of years later, his interest in ballooning grew again and he began training for his second Pilot’s Licence including a trip to Mondovi, Italy for some guaranteed flyable weather. He passed his skills test in Bedfordshire in 2012.

For the next four years, Jonathan flew the club’s balloon becoming the only pilot of the syndicate. After moving house to live in the Kidderminster area, though, the Bareford family gently introduced Jonathan to the world of competition ballooning. After giving a couple of Grand Prix events a try during 2016, Jonathan entered the Nationals in 2017 flying the Cameron Balloons racer demo and was very pleased to have achieved fourth place and received the Best Newcomer award. He is very keen to expand his knowledge of competition ballooning and is looking forward to entering future events.

Jonathan works as an Operations Manager in the Medico-Legal Reporting industry and recently became a new dad making his sleep patterns even worse than most other balloonists – that’s one of his excuses anyway!