Balloon encounter: to airprox or not to airprox?
Last Friday I was at 5500 feet over Cumbria when a black spot appeared in our 11.45, slightly above our level. I stared at it to work out whether it was a threat and realised fairly quickly that it wasn't an aircraft. As it went down our left hand side I could see it was a funfair helium balloon, with address label dangling from it. I mentioned it to Scottish Info but haven't reported it as an Airprox.
I'd be interested to hear what others think. Should I have reported it? There are quite a few balloon sighting reports in the airproxes. My view is it was just a sighting report, although if it HAD been an aircraft I would definitely have reported it because miss distance (assuming my assumptions about balloon size are correct) was about 50ft vertical and 100m horizontal.
NS