Each fall for 13 years, Beth Wright-Smith fired up a nine-story-tall hot-air balloon shaped like a stagecoach and took to the desert skies.
The red-and-yellow tangle of fabric—weighing in at 1,445 pounds—was slow to lift off and land, but it always turned heads at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
“It was like flying a small mountain, basically,” said Ms. Wright-Smith, the pilot.
But the floating stagecoach will be missing from this year’s festival in October for the first time since its maiden voyage roughly 20 years ago. Instead, portions of it are in a warehouse in town, waiting to be recycled into parts for other hot air balloons. One of Ms. Wright-Smith’s friends wants to use part of it as a tarp.
The stagecoach was hogtied by changing tastes in marketing. Wells Fargo & Co., owner of the unwieldy contraption as well as a couple of traditional hot-air balloons in the past, has been paring back use of its Wild West-themed logo. The giant hot-air balloon likeness didn’t make the cut.
