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Hi George,
I can speak with some experience, since I was involved in the first (and only?) tethered balloon event in NY's Central Park. In the late 80's or early 90's (maybe 1989 or 1990?) the Mississippi Balloon, owned and operated by a printing company in Greenwood, MS, was invited to participate at the Mississippi Picnic, an annual event held in Central Park for all transplanted Mississippians living in New York. In order to secure advance permission from the park authorities to conduct this tether, some serious negotiations took place, and rumor has it that a significant contribution to the Park Commission finally convinced them that it could be allowed. The printing company even had a poster prepared with a photo of Central Park, and the Mississippi balloon floating serenely above, against a backdrop of skyscrapers. The Park Commission initially refused to even consider such foolishness, and when the poster was presented, they were incredulous that this had already been done without their knowledge, but of course the photo was a fake, and the balloon owner quickly 'fessed up, saying he just wanted them to see how cool it would look, if they gave their approval. They continued to be difficult until a check was finally produced. Or so the RUMOR goes.
Since the downwind leg of the approach to LaGuardia (or perhaps the base leg?) runs right down the center of the park (at least for the active runway that day!), a launch and flight out of the park was not a possibility, and even though it was something we would have liked to done had it been safe, it was never really seriously considered. However, the tether was VERY CAREFULLY thought out, including several mobile home anchors screwed into the ground. As it turned out, the soil under the surface in Central Park is quite rocky and shallow, and the mobile home anchors were not trusted on their own, so we also used four large, heavy vehicles (including the refrigerated truck that the Miss. Dept. of Agriculture sent up with some 3,000 lbs of catfish for the picnic) as supplementary tie-offs, to be SURE we didn't experience an unplanned launch!
It was a relatively calm day (3-5 kts surface), the balloon was inflated in the East Meadow, in front of Mt. Sinai Hospital, to the delight of the many patients and staff there, who had a wonderful view of the activities, and we gave tether rides for nearly three hours to picnic guests as well as quite a number of truly baffled Manhatten residents who wandered up off the street and queued up for rides, most of whom had never seen a balloon. The wide bodies came roaring over about every three to five minutes for most of the day. It was quite an event, and to my knowledge it remains the first and only balloon ever inflated in Central Park (although there could have been others since that time, I don't really know for sure). If there have been others I would like to hear about it.
I would doubt seriously that a departure has ever been made from Central Park, there is just too much traffic above or in the immediate vicinity, balloons don't show up too well on radar, nor do they normally carry transponders, and there are not many suitable places to land for quite a number of miles in any direction, other than the Atlantic, and that would be no fun! That's not to say it couldn't be done, but as Martin said, it would take a lot of coordination with the FAA (to do it legally), and lots of other conditions being just right to pull it off.
I feel sure the film you saw was special FX, no more difficult than Han Solo flying the Millenium Falcon above the surface of the Death Star. And by the way, what was the movie you saw?
the Duke of URL N 369 RD 'Baby Grand'
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