First, and perhaps most important, of the heroes is the flight recorder (yes, who would have guessed that hot-air balloons have them, too?), a computerized system able to reel off all the essential facts and figures: where exactly were the two balloons involved at the time of the collision? How fast were they flying? How close were they to each other? And how speedily did the damaged balloon descend?Closely linked to that flight recorder is the pilot himself, who, it was revealed, did his best to control the balloon's descent and prepare the passengers for a crash landing. Unfortunately, he still has no recollection of anything that happened that morning. However, witnesses in the second balloon have apparently corroborated what the flight recorder so dispassionately revealed.
Another bunch of heroes were the group of people from Göreme who took time out from their busy tourism jobs to travel back and forth to Kayseri every day for more than a week to comfort the survivors and help tend to their needs before they could be repatriated. They surely deserve medals, one and all.
Those people represent all that is good and decent in human beings, but of course in the villains' corner we find the usual suspects: The Internet conspiracy theorists who, before the injured had even been ferried to a hospital and on the basis of absolutely no evidence at all, immediately started suggesting that the accident might have had something to do with the balloon company's competitors and the passengers in the second balloon who asked for their money back because they had not been able to complete their flight!
Less obviously, chancers but nonetheless on the villainous side, stand the people who allowed the balloon to be chopped up rather than leaving it to be returned to its makers in the condition it fell to the ground, which would have made it easier to learn whatever lessons need to be learned. But then in the general chaos, perhaps that was only to be expected.
By the time you read this, the last of the injured should have been returned to the UK and France, although some of them are barely starting out on the long road to recovery. The pilots of both balloons are taking some much-needed downtime to try and get over their trauma. As for everyone else, well, the skies seem to be as full as ever with balloons, although the accident has raised some awkward questions that no one much wants to think about. It is, after all, only a couple of years since someone working for another of the balloon companies plummeted to his death when a freak wind carried the balloon up into the air while he was still holding onto a mooring rope. Then again, every time we cross the road, we risk being mown down by a car. It's just that the balloons look so harmless.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia. 
