A Businesswoman with Her Head in the Clouds
By Bill Spring
As a city ombudsman, Valerie Favicchio often felt tied down with red tape. These days, nothing ties her down.
The hot-air-balloon pilot and owner of Adventures Aloft spends much of her time aloft, giving passengers a bird's-eye view of spectacular Idaho sights like Lake Coeur d'Alene and the Spokane River.
In 1978, Favicchio left her home in Illinois to attend the University of Alabama in Mobile. Pressured to choose a major, she picked mechanical engineering, assuming it would be like the mechanical drafting class she had enjoyed in high school. It wasn't.
"Nobody explained to me that the major was about heating, ventilation and air conditioning," she remembers.
Unhappy with her major and eager to enter the work force, Favicchio left school after a year. "I worked in civil and structural drafting and land planning, and worked my way up through different firms," she says.
After working in Alabama and Texas, Favicchio fell in love with the natural beauty of Colorado. In 1985, she moved to Fort Collins, Colo., and eventually took a job as a development review coordinator with the nearby city of Loveland. Central to her post was helping homeowners and contractors with city ordinances and building codes.
"People would stop and say, 'Thank you, you've really been helpful,' " she says. "And that was what it was really about."
But mixed with the satisfaction was a good deal of frustration. "I didn't like the bureaucracy, the red tape? the slow process it took to get anything accomplished."
By 1989, Favicchio had stumbled onto ballooning, a weekend hobby that left her feeling every bit as free-flying as her weekday job made her feel grounded.
It started by chance.
"A neighbor and I were sitting out, having a beer across the back fence," she recalls. "He said, 'Hey I'm going to crew balloons for my brother in the morning. You want to come along?' "
Favicchio accepted, and spent the next day helping pilot J.J. Garcia with the ground-based tasks of ballooning, including helping to inflate the "envelope" (the fabric bag that holds the basket aloft) and riding in the chase truck. "I was hooked immediately," she says.
Soon Favicchio was spending all the time she could crewing for Garcia's balloon-ride business, and attending his FAA-approved school. After six months, she had her pilot's license. "It was a little like having a driver's license and no car," she says, "so I bought a balloon."
Favicchio named her balloon "Pneuma," a Greek word meaning "soul" or "vital spirit." For the next five years, ballooning was her hobby and passion, but it wasn't how she made her living.
That all changed in November 2001, when her husband, Eric Hanson, decided he wanted to move back to his native Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Favicchio was ready to leave her job in Loveland, which she had for 11 years, and start over. "The timing was right," she says.
Two factors convinced Favicchio that she could make a living with a balloon-ride company in Coeur d'Alene. First, the lower cost of living meant she could live with slim profit margins. Secondly, the area, unlike Colorado, was not yet saturated with balloon operators. After clearing takeoff and landing rights with local parks and landowners, Favicchio took her first official paying customer for a champagne flight in the summer of 2002.
Piloting a balloon is complicated business. Although passengers are snapping photos and soaking in the scenery, Favicchio is constantly busy — from checking wind indicators on the ground and adjusting the balloon's elevation to radioing instructions to the chase truck. But even though piloting is now her job, and safety is her No. 1 priority, ballooning is also still her passion. "I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't having fun," she says.
"(A balloon) is this huge, gentle giant," she says. "The sensation of floating is like nothing you've ever experienced before. I still am tingling every time I fly."
Almost as important as the sense of freedom is the camaraderie. "You can throw a dozen strangers together in one or two balloons, and by the end of the morning they're best pals."
Favicchio also flies competitively. She is seeking companies that would like to make use of her balloon's potential for advertising. In the meantime, she's enjoying every minute she spends up there.
Of course, she also enjoys the bubbly bonus she shares with passengers when they reach the ground.
"I used to joke," she says, "that the only reason I'm doing this is so I can be drinking champagne at 9:30 in the morning and not have to go to all those meetings."
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