The hot air balloon that crashed in Egypt killing at least 18 foreigners was the second collision involving the company Sky Cruises in the span of 18 months, according to The Guardian.

Another balloon belonging to the carrier crashed into the Nile in October of 2011. No one was killed but the balloon hit a boat that was floating on the river and its passengers reported bruising. The pilot involved in the 2011 crash no longer works for Sky Cruises, according to the news report, but the company remains the preferred carrier for Blue Sky travel agents and its extension Thomas Cook UK, a British travel agency that said in a statement three of its tour customers died in the recent Luxor accident.

A hot air balloon flying over the ancient city of Luxor in Egypt caught on fire and crashed into a sugar cane field Tuesday, a security official said. The balloon was carrying at least 20 tourists when its snagged landing cable got caught around a helium tube and sparked a fire, which triggered an explosion in its gas canister, an investigator with the state prosecutor's office said.

The casualties include tourists from Hong Kong, and French, British, Belgian, Hungarian and Japanese nationals. Three survivors - two British and one Egyptian - were taken to a local hospital for treatment and reports stated that the pilot was among the survivors but that he was treated for burns. He may have survived by jumping out of the balloon before it hit the ground, a local ballooning official told Reuters.

View the video below for exclusive footage from Tuesday's hot air balloon crash, taken by a passenger in a different balloon that saw smoke coming from the balloon before it collapsed and fell to the ground.

Kamal el-Kordy, Blue Sky's Upper Egypt area manager, insisted there was no way to foreseen Tuesday's incident.

"Sky Cruises are the highest one on the market. We [were] worried, of course. But we have to follow the rules," he said. "[Sky Cruises] have all the documents from all the civil aviation control. What can we do? We are not engineers and they have all the paperwork according to the law."

"All of the excursion companies we use satisfy the health and safety demands of all the major British travel companies," he added. "We work according to the laws in their countries."

Watch the 2011 hot air balloon crash in the video below.