The Hindenburg is the iconic image in most people’s mind as to reasons why Zeppelins are unsafe. The gas bags in it were filled with hydrogen, which is a highly explosive and flammable gas, it is the fuel that they intend to extract from water to use in cars. Since the time of the first world war the U.S. has instead used Helium in the gas bags of our zeppelins and blimps, it is non-flammable and we have something on the order of 90+% of the world’s supply of it here in this country. The German’s tried to buy stocks of it after WW I but we refused to sell it to them as it could potentially be used as a strategic material, to this very day the Dept of Defense controls who is permitted to export it and the quantities involved.

Zeppelins were used for warfare in an era when conventional aircraft had low service ceilings but since sometime in the 1930s conventional aircraft can fly higher than lighter than air machines and because of their size and slow speed they will never be able to play any significant part in active hostilities again. The Navy has a fleet of blimps and has used them since the 1930s to serve as observation and radar platforms in the Caribbean because of the long time that they are capable of remaining on station. They are fairly susceptible to strong winds and similar weather phenomena, that being the major reason of crashes for them. The reduced size of blimps in relation to the mammoth size of the zeppelins of old, has helped to reduce this effect to some degree. The new generation of zeppelins are very similar in size to the present generation of blimps.

Two aspects of their flight characteristics that other aircraft generally are unable to replicate is the relatively slow speed they can fly at and the fairly quiet manner in which they do so. These two aspects lend themselves to allowing one to better appreciate the experience of flight in a way one could not do in a conventional aircraft. Being able to drift along quietly among the clouds at a walking pace looking down on the earth below is a form of flight common only to zeppelins, blimps and hot air balloons. Offering the general public a chance to fly again on a zeppelin is something that has not been offered to them since the start of the Second World War in the late 1930s. This new air travel company in L.A. will likely find a market among those people who can appreciate the novelty of this unique form of air travel and or seeking a new perspective from which to view the city and surrounding terrain, below.