Want to ride in a Zeppelin? Me too! Book flights via Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei. Auf deutsch. € 335,00 - € 370,00 per person. Tell them I sent you. They'll look at you strangely :) since May 14, 2002 we operate the most confortable airship worldwide with the highest passenger capability available. Our Skyship 600 N-605SK carries up to 12 passengers from We to Sun on five to six flights a day over one of the most beautiful areas of Switzerland.

An airship, also known as a dirigible, is a powered lighter-than-air craft. In other words, an airship is an aircraft that derives its lift from a lifting gas (usually helium or hot air) while it is propelled forward by an engine.

There is a special pilot licence that is required for airships. In the USA the airship pilot rating was recently split into VFR (visual flight rules) and IFR (instrument flight rules) since modern airships are now able to fly under instrument flight conditions, i.e. at night or in the clouds. As for any other pilots licence, a special commercial rating has to be obtained for commercial flights. Virtually all airship pilots are professionals employed by commercial airship operators.

Unless you have several hundred thousand dollars to spend, you should probably consider building a radio-controlled airship or a manned hot air balloon instead. If the financial requirements do not deter you, a book called "Building Gas Blimps - A Practical Guide to Building Small Gas Blimps" by Robert J. Recks will provide you with more detail. The book is available for approximately US$80 directly from the author (e-mail r.recks@juno.com).

Each lesson is 3-4 hours of instruction with 1 hour riding time. The lessons are divided between two thirty-minute sessions. Your session starts when you put on your wakeboard and jump into the water. The 5 to 10 minutes traveling to nice water does not count as your lesson time.

Of the hundreds of inventors granted patents for early airship (and airplane) designs and variations, few succeeded in building or flying their craft. gt; J.B.M.

Within the archives they have a large number of Blue Prints of Airships! (Tangential: R100 in Canada pdf.) A 6ft.-long (2m.) 3-view drawing of the USS AKRON is available from the MAPS Air Museum gift shop for $10 US, including shipping & handling in the US. Write to:

The answer is usually NO. Despite all the modern technology used in today's blimps they are cost effective only for advertising purposes. In relatively small blimps, passenger transportation is not profitable enough unless it is combined with an advertising mission. In the past, the small number of blimp rides which is available has been given to executives and clients of the advertisers/sponsors of the blimps. Blimp rides were available in Las Vegas for ten months in 2000 (see www.vegas.

Some own them (Goodyear and Fuji for instance), but most lease the airship and the service. Service includes the pilot and crew, insurance, service vehicles and operations management. The only thing the advertiser has to do is determine where they want to fly their blimp.

In-air flight time for the airship (in a typical lease) is 70 - 120 hours per month. Normal flight time is six hours per day, five days per week. Flexible scheduling allows for flight operations on weekends and holidays to best suit the advertiser's needs.

From what I gather, this is mainly a matter of on-the-job training. Having earned your pilot's license, your best bet is to contact an airship manufacturer and/or operator and tell them you want to be an airship pilot. If accepted, you will enter a training program which will lead to airship certification. Upon attainment of your lta certification you will then offer me a ride! AIRSHIP TRAINING (Atlantis 2005) is a compilation of several old LTA Manuals and the weather is generously dealt with.

Mike Rentell, of the Airship Association may be of help, too. E-mail him at: rentell@airship-association.org. The association keeps track of current airship and related technology in the UK and offers specialist books on the subject. The Royal Aeronautical Society Library has reference to quite a number of US, UK and German hangar photographs. Midland Publications is a good mail-order source for such aviation books if you do not wish to order them from their individual publishers.

Because the airship is filled with such a huge volume of gas (about 250,000 cubic feet) and under very low pressure, gas will only leak out at a very slow rate. The British Ministry of Defence fired many hundreds of bullets into an airship envelope during tests in 1994. It still took many hours to deflate and land.

Yes, the word "dirigeable" is derived from the French word meaning steerable. As the first time airships had to be balloons - but steerable balloons - they were called "dirigeables". All airships are dirigeables.

Our airships could stay aloft, without refueling, for up to 24 hours. With extra tanks, one of our Skyships flew for 52 hours without refueling in 1990.

We normally cruise around 30 to 50 mph., but we can go up to 70 mph (or faster, if we have a tailwind!). While cruising at 30 knots, the Skyship consumes 8 gallons (48 lbs.) of fuel per hour. During a week of operations, the Skyship consumes less fuel than a 767 uses to simply move away from it's gate to a runway!!

According to the FAA's regulations, Alberto technically qualifies as an airship. So in general, in order to take passengers, a pilot must have an airship rating. However Alberto flies much more like a hot air balloon than a conventional airship. As a result, the FAA has granted Alberto's two builders special permission to take non-paying passengers for rides.