The origins of the GEMAB
For 10 years, the Pilâtre de Rozier Challenge brought together up to 150 European hot-air balloons which rose each year at the end of August over the city of Metz. And this from 1983 (year of the bicentenary of the first human flight) to 1992. The aim was to celebrate one of the most famous children of the city of Metz, the physicist and chemist Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier (1754-1785). The latter was the first to defy the air with the Marquis François d’Arlandes, on board the hot-air balloon designed by the brothers Etienne and Joseph Montgolfier. From the Château de la Muette in Paris, he took off on 21 November 1783, only six months after the conception of the aerostat. Then in 1989, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, Fraternité 89 was born. Two years later, on the airport of Metz Nancy Lorraine, the World Aerostation Biennial was born, which became Mondial Air Ballons. The venue changed in 1993 to the Chambley airfield. Thus the memory of the first captain in the history of the air keeps on living in his Lorraine home.
