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LUXEMBOURG 鈥� Peter Cuneo dreamed he was asleep in his bed in sa国际传媒官网网页入口 over the weekend.

When he awoke, he was floating above a deck of clouds more than 20,000 feet over the mid-Atlantic Ocean 鈥� wind-borne for the European coastline on what is now likely the longest hydrogen-powered balloon flight of its kind ever recorded.

"Sometimes your mind plays tricks on you when you're up there," he told the Journal, speaking from a hotel in Luxembourg, where his journey ended early Sunday morning.

Cuneo, senior pilot Bert Padelt of Pennsylvania and British pilot Alicia Hempleman-Adams took off from the northeastern coast of Maine before dawn on Thursday aboard the Atlantic Explorer balloon, which carried them 2,852 nautical miles. The trip took 70 hours and 11 minutes.

While the voyage is still under official review by the International Aeronautical Association, it is believed to be the longest transoceanic gas-powered balloon flight ever completed.

According to Cuneo, however, Padelt wasn't planning to break a record when he began charting out the flight several years ago.

Rather, the trip was Padelt's third attempt to retrace the first-ever transatlantic balloon flight in 1978. That year, three other New Mexicans 鈥�  Ben Abruzzo, Maxi Anderson and Larry Newman 鈥� crossed the ocean in the gas-powered Double Eagle II in a gondola dubbed Spirit of sa国际传媒官网网页入口.

"He just felt like it would be a really, really nice accomplishment," Cuneo said of Padelt, who also attempted the journey in 2024 and 2025, when Cuneo was also aboard, "He thought it would be kind of a life-changing thing."

The three-person crew on this final successful flight coordinated over WhatsApp with a Wyoming-based meteorologist and a command center in England as they took off in a window of clear weather Thursday.

From there, they rode the wind across the coast of Newfoundland, where they made landfall Friday morning.

It was one of several points where the weather began to turn during the journey 鈥� temperatures dipped to as low as 17 degrees below zero and ice formed on the balloon, which Cuneo said is about twice the size of those typically seen at the sa国际传媒官网网页入口 International Balloon Fiesta, where he and his wife also fly.

The crew rode in a 4-by-6 1/2-foot gondola fitted with warm-weather supplies, oxygen masks to account for the high altitude and a small cot where the three pilots slept in shifts.

Unlike the hobbyist balloons often seen drifting over the Land of Enchantment on early mornings, hydrogen-powered balloons like the Explorer carry a provision of 30-pound bags of sand to serve as ballasts, which can be dumped to compensate for weight changes caused by temperature shifts.

By the time the crew made landfall over the coast of Nova Scotia, they were already running short of these essential altitude controls.

"We decided, after talking to a couple of our balloon experts, that it was safe to continue on, even though we were low on ballasts," Cuneo said. "The conditions were predicted to be improving."

As the weather warmed, they could hear sheets of ice sliding off the sides of the balloon, helicoptering through the cloud cover below, breaking apart and drifting away on the wind.

The balloon carried the crew up to 90 mph over the North Atlantic over the next 36 hours before they came over the coast of Normandy Saturday evening, the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

Here again, the crew decided to push on, despite dropping more of their essential ballasts during the ocean crossing, where they encountered torrential rain, snow and more ice.

A ground team that included Cuneo's wife, pilot Barbara Fricke, had flown into Paris in advance. They gained permission from air traffic controllers for the balloon to cross into airspace over the city, but the crew ultimately drifted around it, communicating their movements to airliner pilots as they continued toward the German border.

"But they were basically just there to wish us well," Cuneo said of their chatter with the commercial pilots, "They gave us some weather information, but it was kind of amazing to be up there with the big boys playing their games when you know you're really not in their league."

The crew arrived over Luxembourg after sunrise early Sunday morning. Below, they could see fog over low green hills, a sign of calm weather and good landing conditions.

Padelt and Hempleman-Adams took control of the descent, standing the balloon up just past a tree-lined ridge, where the crew was greeted by balloon enthusiasts and their ground crew, who embraced them and celebrated their safe landing.

"The pilots were supported by an international team of specialists in meteorology, air traffic control, and other fields, as well as the crew that prepared and launched the balloon in the United States and retrieved the balloon in Europe," Kim Vesely, press officer for the voyage and a member of the ground crew, wrote in a press release.

A retired engineer, Cuneo said he and his wife started flying in the mid-1980s, while he was working as an engineer for Lockheed-Martin.

He was looking for a challenge, a "confidence builder," which eventually grew into the couple's favorite hobby.

"I gotta' say that on my first flight, I was rather petrified," he said, "but it grew on me."

One of his favorite photos from the transatlantic flight was of the moon rising on Saturday evening, the final night of the voyage.

"There were streaks of clouds kind of crisscrossing it," he said. "There was a layer of water beneath it, and it was not a very good quality photograph, but it was kind of ethereal. It reminded me of a 1920s photograph and maybe gave me that feeling that I was in a different world at times."

John Miller is the sa国际传媒官网网页入口鈥檚 northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.