Best hot air balloon companies in Teotihuacan: what to compare, and how to check it yourself

The seven tiers, with the basket count published next to each price, are in our price table. If you already know which of the five criteria decides it for you, go straight to the tier: basket size sends you to the private balloon for 2 to 8 passengers, and the landed price sends you to the flight-only Teotihuacan balloon ride at $2,100 MXN — and if what decides it is getting there at all, to the flight with hotel pickup in Mexico City at $3,700 MXN.

First the CRT. A company that wants to sell balloon rides needs a Constancia de Requisitos Técnicos — a technical requirements certificate (clause 11.1.1 of AFAC’s balloon circular). To get it, five documents must already exist, and one of them is AFAC’s own letter approving the insurance policy (clause 11.1.3, section V). So the insurance is not an afterthought bolted on at the end: it is a precondition of everything else.

Then the permit, for third-party air services in the panoramic balloon category (art. 27 of the Civil Aviation Act; clause 11.2.1 of the circular). The order is written into the rule: clause 11.2.2 says the permit is granted only to whoever already holds a CRT. Which gives you a usable test at no cost: an operator who produces a permit but has never heard of a CRT is showing you a document that could not have been issued.

The pilot needs a different paper altogether, and this is where a genuine document can still be the wrong one. Clause 18.1.3 requires every flight crew member to hold a commercial balloon pilot licence, free flight. The private balloon licence is a real Mexican procedure that a real pilot can hold and show you — it just does not authorise carrying paying passengers. Press coverage after the 2023 accident repeated that the private licence was enough. It is not, and the balloon-specific circular is both more specific and more recent.

And the field needs a permit of its own (clause 13.2.2.1). Almost nobody asks this one, which is exactly why it is worth asking.

And there is a second authority — the one that actually put the seals up

Everything above is federal: AFAC requires it, AFAC issues it, AFAC inspects it. But a launch site is also a business premises with a door, and that door can be closed by the government of the State of Mexico, which is not AFAC and does not answer to it. It is a distinction almost nobody explains, and it decided the largest operation this valley has seen.

On 28 May 2025, five days after an envelope tore over San Martín de las Pirámides, state and municipal officials went through the launch sites and sealed nine companies. What failed was not the federal permit: several premises lacked the civil protection clearance issued by the state government (Milenio). The suspensions were temporary and could be extended if the findings were not corrected. The operation itself, with its three sources and where they disagree, is further down this page.

The same day, El Universal published the checklist the state authority applies to these businesses, and not one of its items appears in AFAC’s balloon circular: land-use licence, operating licence, civil protection clearance and a health-authority operating notice, plus incorporation papers or tax registration and an entry in the National Tourism Registry. Add that the ground vehicles must meet the state mobility rules and stay under 20 km/h on the road around the archaeological zone. An operator can have every federal paper in order and still be operating irregularly. That is why the thirteen questions on this page ask for both sets.

What expires, what never does

Put the four dates side by side and most bad answers stop working. This is the table we could not find anywhere else, so we built it from the rules themselves.

Every clause above is quoted and linked article by article in our balloon safety guide and operator check, which walks the whole legal hierarchy rather than summarising it. This page is the shortlist you can carry into a WhatsApp conversation.

1. The public aircraft file — free, from your phone, right now

AFAC publishes a downloadable spreadsheet of every aircraft registered in Mexico, with no login and no request form: the Mexican Aeronautical Registry file. Its columns include registration, category, model, manufacturer, owner, type of service and base of operations. You do not need Spanish to use it — the registration is alphanumeric, and you are searching for a string.

We counted what is in it, and you can redo the count: 6,833 aircraft in total, 256 of them in the balloon category, and all 256 carry the XB- prefix that Mexican law assigns to third-party air services (art. 44 of the Act). Where it gets interesting is the type-of-service column, because the wording is not uniform:

Four limits you have to know before you use this. The file’s cut-off is September 2023 and we could not find a later public version, so a balloon first registered after that date will simply not be there — absence proves nothing on its own, it is a question to ask. The “base of operations” column records airports and cities and no record says Teotihuacan, so the file cannot map this valley. The counts above are ours, done on the file as published: download it and check us. And the limit that gets misread most often: this is a register of aircraft, not of companies. It tells you who owns a balloon and what type of service it is authorised for; it does not tell you whether the company that sold you the seat holds a CRT, a permit or a state clearance. It is not the missing register — it is what exists, and that is why you search it by registration.

2. An official certification, in three business days

This is the part almost nobody knows exists. The Mexican Aeronautical Registry is public by law (art. 47 of the Act; art. 36 of its Regulations), and anyone who pays the fee can request a certification of what a file contains. Article 39 adds the part that matters most: you can also request a certificate stating that no entry exists at all. Article 41 sets a maximum of three business days.

What is filed there: registrations, airworthiness certificates, permits and insurance policies. In other words, the state will confirm or deny in writing, in under a week, the same four things an operator can only assert.

3. What your own eyes settle, on the morning, for free

• Legal duty The registration painted on the envelope, next to the Mexican flag, displayed clearly and visibly (clause 10.2). It starts with XB-.
• Legal duty The documents that ride in the basket: airworthiness certificate, certificate of registration, logbook and the AFAC-approved insurance policy, as originals or certified copies (clause 21.1; art. 32 of the Act). You may ask to see them before you climb in.
• Legal duty The safety briefing, which the pilot in command must give and must make sure you have understood, preferably by demonstration (clause 13.13.1).
• Legal duty The retrieval vehicle, with a dry-chemical extinguisher of 2 kg or more, a first-aid kit, a radio and an emergency protocol with phone numbers (clause 20.3.1). It is parked in plain sight, and it is what drives you back.
• Legal duty A radio on board, on every operation, so the crew can reach the ground team (clause 16.1.1).

May 2025, the larger of the two. On 28 May 2025, starting early that morning, state and municipal inspectors worked their way through the launch sites that ring the archaeological zone and sealed nine companies. What failed was not the federal permit: several premises did not hold the civil protection clearance issued by the state government. The suspensions were announced as temporary and could be extended if the findings were not put right. We are not publishing the name of any of the nine, although all three outlets did: the fact — nine suspensions, that date, that reason — is what is useful to someone about to pay; the list of names is theirs, not ours.

March 2026, the more recent one. On 29 March 2026, AFAC ran a verification visit to the launch sites, this time with Inveamex and municipal civil protection. TV Azteca quotes the sentence in full: “a total of 46 balloons in service were inspected, 23 of them with irregularities”. Three companies were suspended and sealed, with no period specified. We are not publishing their names either.

And the honest caveat, because a figure is only worth what its sourcing is worth: Infobae and SDP Noticias both word the same sentence as “23 balloons out of a total of 46 in service” having been inspected, which would mean 23 were inspected, not that 23 were irregular. That is two outlets against one. TV Azteca is the only one quoting the whole sentence, so we attribute it to TV Azteca by name and not as an official AFAC figure. The full comparison of who reported what, case by case, is in the public accident record.

1. Read the denominator before the average. An average is only as stable as the number of reviews under it, and the arithmetic is simple enough to do in your head: a new rating equals the old total plus the new score, divided by one more review. Here is what a single one-star morning does to four listings.

Read it the other way and it becomes a forgery test. A perfect 5.0 resting on ten reviews can be assembled by ten people who know you. A 4.8 resting on 191 cannot be assembled by anyone. And the stickiness cuts both ways: lifting a 4.5 with 20 reviews up to 4.9 would take 80 more flawless reviews. A young perfect score is thin evidence in either direction — it is not a red flag, it is an absence of evidence.

2. Look at when they landed. Reviews are written on the drive home, so a healthy listing dribbles. Twenty five-star reviews clustered inside the same week, especially on a listing that was quiet before and after, is a pattern that rarely happens by itself.

3. Look for proper names. This is the cheapest authenticity check there is: nobody invents a proper name. A paid review says “amazing experience, highly recommend”. A real one says who flew the balloon. And when the same names keep coming back across months, you are looking at pilots who really do fly for that company, not at a name borrowed for one morning. Around 35 pilots fly with the brand, which is why we do not hand you a tidy list of five and call it the crew. The ones our customers name on Google, by name, are Antonio, Roberto G., Raúl, Marco B., Naien, Naren, Fernando, Fernando F., Héctor, Alejandro S. and María; several of them sign the reviews at the foot of this page, word for word, and you can go and find those reviews on the listing yourself. The one figure we can put on any of them does not come from us: in a review dated 7 August 2026, the passenger Joy Pogoy wrote of Antonio that “He has 14 years of experience”. That is her word, on our Google listing, and not a licence record we are publishing here.

Ours reads 4.8 from 191 reviews — open it and check. Which brings the warning that applies to us as much as to anyone: no rating tells you whether the operator holds a permit. Stars measure the morning a customer had. They cannot see an expired airworthiness certificate, and every one of the five documented accidents in this valley was flown by a company with reviews.

Question thirteen has a seasonal half that no operator volunteers: how often the wind grounds a morning depends on when you come. November to May is the dry window over this valley, and the dawn temperature, rain and wind for all twelve months are set out in the best time of year to fly Teotihuacan. A free, unlimited reschedule is worth most in the months that need it — which is why the answer to thirteen and the month you book are the same decision.

What we still owe this page. Five entries in the column above are answered “in writing, before you pay” rather than printed here, and we would rather flag that than let it pass as thoroughness:

Once those five are on this page, the whole column stops being a promise and becomes a record you can check against the registry and against the state authority. Holding a page to the standard it asks of others is the only version of this that is worth reading — which is why the state clearance sits on the list of what we still owe, three paragraphs after we explained how much it matters.