Dad Killed on Hot Air Balloon Ride That Was Gift From Son

A scoutmaster who received a hot air balloon ride as a special New Year's treat from his teenage son was killed when the craft plunged to the ground and burst into flames, British media reported.

Allan Burnett, 55, of Bristol, was killed along with experienced balloonist Lee Pibworth in the crash Saturday morning in Somerset, southwestern England.

Burnett had gotten the New Year's Day balloon ride as a gift from his son Alex, who was Pibworth's usual co-pilot, The Telegraph and Daily Mail reported.

The Cameron A120 craft had an apparently normal liftoff from a field. The ground crew -- including Alex Burnett and Pibworth's wife, Elisabeth -- lost sight of the craft for a few moments due to cloud cover, but then it reappeared with the canopy deflated, the newspapers said.

Horrified spectators watched helplessly as the balloon began to drop like a rock from an altitude of 20,000 feet, the newspapers said. The balloon basket exploded in flames as it hit the ground at a lawn bowling club in the village of Midsomer Norton. No one on the ground was hurt.

Witness Sarah Andrews said the balloon was already on fire as it plummeted from the sky, dangerously close to some houses.

"I could hear a flapping noise almost like a very, very slow helicopter noise and I looked up and there was a hot air balloon on fire," she told The Telegraph.

"There was a big ball of fire underneath it. There was fire up one side of it and the basket was alight as well," she said. "It was coming down very quickly. I thought it was coming through the roof of the houses."

Barrie Dando, chairman of the Prattens Bowls Club, where the balloon crashed, said the craft narrowly missed some houses.

"There is private housing, terraced housing, not very far away at all and a school on the other side of the road. It could have come down on one of the houses," he told Sky News. "And on another day in the summer, people may have been out playing bowls."

Authorities said it was possible that liquid petroleum gas cylinders used to power the balloon might have ignited. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch was trying to determine what caused the accident.

Friends and colleagues were mourning Pibworth, a father of one, and Burnett, who ran the Blenheim Scouts and also served as a governor of a nearby primary school.

''RIP Allan Burnett he was a very good man and always there to help people," Liam Stevenson posted on Facebook, according to The Telegraph. "He will never be forgotten and be in our hearts. To all his family and friends we are all thinking about him."