The pilots' flight was no small feat. They had beaten one of the greatest ballooning achievements. That's the 137-hour duration record set in 1978. The "Double Eagle" crew of Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman set the record. Theirs was the first balloon flight across the Atlantic. Bradley and Tiukhtyaev also easily broke the distance record of 5,209 miles (about 8,383 kilometers). That record was set during the first trans-Pacific balloon flight in 1981.