What was the Thunderbird Balloon Classic?
In 1975 a business school in Glendale launched hot air balloons from its own front yard. The school was Thunderbird, founded in 1946 as the American Institute for Foreign Trade on the decommissioned Thunderbird Field No. 1, a World War II Army training base, and the campus still had the bones of an airfield. The balloon race it started there became an annual festival, with students running the food booths.
In 1989 the event left campus, and for its second act it came to Scottsdale. At WestWorld, the city’s equestrian and event grounds below the McDowells, the balloon classic took its place among the venue’s big names. In September 2003 the East Valley Tribune listed it with the Barrett-Jackson auction and the All-Arabian Horse Show as WestWorld’s top-tier draws. It was cancelled after 2006.
That is most of what the public record says. Scottsdale’s city historian has listed it among WestWorld’s past events and among the Airpark-area events that “went away,” but there is no history of it online: no attendance figures, no balloon counts, no list of winners, no explanation of why it ended. This page is a start.
Its sibling in Scottsdale’s story is Thunderbird Field II, the training base that became Scottsdale Airport, run during the war by the same operator as the Glendale field where the race began.
What we can document
- The founding. The school’s history records the first race in 1975, on the campus itself, which had been designed as an airfield, and describes it growing into an annual festival with student-run food booths. Catalog descriptions of the Arizona Memory Project’s Thunderbird collection call the early event the Thunderbird Invitational Balloon Race and describe it as a Friends of Thunderbird scholarship fundraiser.
- The move. The event moved off campus in 1989. The same catalog descriptions say it went to Glendale Airport for two years and then to WestWorld in 1991.
- WestWorld years. The Thunderbird collection holds an invitation to a 1991 reception and balloon glow, an aerial photograph of the race at WestWorld in November 1995, and a 1999 Official Souvenir Program. In 2003 the East Valley Tribune reported that more than 600,000 visitors had come to WestWorld the year before for dozens of events, naming the Thunderbird Balloon Classic among them, and a second 2003 story counted it with Barrett-Jackson and the All-Arabian show as one of the venue’s top-tier events.
- The end. The school’s history says the balloon classic was cancelled after 2006.
Where the accounts disagree
The catalog descriptions put the race at WestWorld from 1991. Scottsdale’s city historian, Joan Fudala, wrote in 2024 that “for several years in the late 1990s/early 2000s, the Thunderbird Balloon Classic was held at WestWorld.” Both can be partly right; the 1995 photograph fits the earlier date. What is not established is whether it ran at WestWorld every year from 1991 to 2006, or moved again before the end.
Seeing balloons now
The balloon race is gone, but you can still see balloons glow over Scottsdale’s desert. The Spooktacular Hot Air Balloon Festival inflates more than twenty balloons at Salt River Fields over three October nights, and our hot air balloon rides note covers sunrise flights over the north Scottsdale desert and the January Arizona Balloon Classic in the West Valley.
What needs archival confirmation
This is the most thinly documented event in our guide, and we would rather say so than fill the gaps. Every item below is either unconfirmed or unknown.
- The Scottsdale years. Was the first WestWorld edition in 1991? Was every edition from 1991 to 2006 at WestWorld? The 2006 edition in particular is unplaced.
- The Glendale Airport years. The two-year stay after 1989 rests on catalog descriptions alone.
- Dates. We have one month, November, from one photograph. The event’s usual weekend is not established.
- Sponsorship. When Thunderbird stopped sponsoring the event, and who ran it afterward. One account we could not verify says the school had stepped back by the early 2000s.
- Scale. Balloon counts, pilot rosters, and attendance, for any year.
- The ending. Why it was cancelled after 2006. The school was cutting faculty and staff in 2001 and 2004 as enrollment fell, and WestWorld was changing too, but no source we found ties either to the decision.
Where the answers are
- Arizona Memory Project, Thunderbird collection: the 1975 race photographs, the 1989 classic, the 1991 reception and balloon-glow invitation, the November 1995 WestWorld aerial, and the 1999 Official Souvenir Program, which should list sponsors, pilots and the schedule for that year.
- ASU Library, Thunderbird School Archives: the school became part of Arizona State University in 2014 and moved to ASU’s downtown Phoenix campus in 2018. Programs for 1991 through 2006, sponsor lists, pilot rosters and attendance figures are the things to request.
- WestWorld and City of Scottsdale event files: facility rental records would settle which years the race was booked there.
- Newspapers: the Scottsdale Progress on microfilm at the Scottsdale Public Library and the Arizona Republic, each fall from 1991 to 2006.
If you flew in it, crewed a balloon, or worked a food booth as a Thunderbird student, the Scottsdale Historical Society is the place to send what you remember, and it would make this page a great deal better.