Hot air balloon crashes after mid-air proposal

A hot air balloon went crashing into some trees in Canada, moments after a passenger proposed to his girlfriend.

Christine Peters had just said “yes” after her boyfriend Stephen Martin popped the question when the balloon got caught up in a spot of trouble over a farmer's field near Edmonton on the weekend, ABC reports.

Video, filmed by passenger Jeffrey Scott as the balloon made its descent, shows the moment the pilot lost control and the balloon went crashing into some trees.

In the footage, the 12 passengers cry out in alarm and grunt as they go colliding into each other and the balloon basket lands on the ground with a thud.

“It all happened very quickly so I don’t think we really had a chance to be afraid,” Mr Scott told Nine.com.au.

“We were all just more or less relieved in the end that we were all ok and no one got hurt.”

The balloon was travelling about 30-40km/h and the wind was very gusty, Mr Scott said.

“It was gusting and the pilot believes that we hit a down draft when we started our descent to land and it just pushed us down into the trees.”

“We’re down,” Mr Scott can be heard exclaiming in the video, to which another passenger replies: “No, we’re not!”

Mr Scott said the balloon had thumped down onto the ground but then took off again after the wind suddenly stopped and the burners the pilot was pumping power into to avoid the trees lifted the balloon up again.

Mr Martin said the crash had served to make his proposal all the more memorable.

"Seeing as how I proposed to her, it makes for an awesome story," Mr Martin told ABC.