Mr Trappe has already crossed the Channel this way

For Up, read Down.

An aviator who took off on Thursday hoping to cross the the Atlantic suspended from 370 helium-filled balloons has come back to earth just 12 hours into his adventure.

Jonathan Trappe, 39, had earned comparisons with the hero of the Pixar film Up as he set off from Caribou, Maine, in a small yellow lifeboat under a multicoloured bunch of balloons.

The IT worker was planning to become the first person to make the 2,500-mile journey to Europe by “cluster ballooning”, a feat he expected to take between three and five days.

But he was forced to make an early landing in the Canadian province of Newfoundland, about 350 miles from his launch site, after a “technical issue”.

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