Longest-duration flight in a hot-air balloon (FAI-approved)
- Who
- Fedor Konyukhov, Ivan Menyaylo
- What
- 55:09:57 hour(s):minute(s):second(s)
- Where
- Russian Federation (Krasny Kut)
- When
- 09 February 2017
On 9 February 2017, Fedor Konyukhov and Ivan Menyaylo (both Russia) made the longest-duration non-stop hot-air balloon flight in a time of 55 hours 9 minutes 57 seconds – beating the previous record, which had stood since 1997, by 4 hours 37 minutes. The feat was ratified by the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale).
The two balloonists took off from Yuzhny airfield in the city of Rybinsk, 300 km north of Moscow, and flew 1,029 km (639 miles) south-east to Krasny Kut, a Russian town near the border with Kazakhstan. They travelled at speeds of 10–40 km/h (6.2–24.9 mph) and at altitudes between 190 m and 300 m (623–984 ft), in a balloon holding over 10,000 cubic metres (350,000 cubic feet) of hot air and weighing 5 tonnes.