How many blimps are there? Suffice it to say, airships aren't as common as they once were
Here’s Why You Don’t See Blimps Anymore
Updated on May 21, 2025
Few modes of transportation have captured the public’s imagination like blimps and other airships. Something about these lighter-than-air aircraft evokes the past and feels futuristic simultaneously. And there’s a good reason for that: Airships—including blimps—have been around for more than a century, but advancing technology is propelling the development of new models. It would be fair to wonder how many blimps there are in the world.
Read on to learn about the history and modern uses of blimps and other airships—and why no one knows for sure how many blimps exist today. We got the scoop directly from Dan Grossman, one of the foremost experts on airships in the world.
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How many blimps are there in the world?
The short answer is that there’s no way of knowing how many blimps there are in the world. But it’s also important to distinguish between blimps and other types of airships, such as zeppelins and dirigibles.
Blimps are just one type of airship; others include rigid airships and semi-rigid airships. Blimps—also known as “pressure airships”—have no internal rigid structure; instead, they rely on the pressure of the gases inside to maintain their shape, and lose that shape if they deflate. Rigid airships get their shape from a full internal framework. Semi-rigid airships have a partial rigid frame, but most of their shape comes from internal gas pressure. A zeppelin is a rigid airship manufactured by one company, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin of Germany.
“Dirigible” is an outdated term for “airship,” and comes from the French verb diriger, which means “to steer,” says Grossman, an aviation researcher and historian specializing in airships. (Hot air balloons, which can’t be steered, are not considered airships.)
So, why don’t we know how many blimps there are in the world? “It’s an inscrutable question,” Grossman says. First, it depends on whether we’re only talking about the number of blimps that are currently inflated and in operation, or if we’re also counting blimps that are in storage, but capable of reactivation, he explains. On top of that, he says, “It’s hard to know which companies are still in business, as things have changed a lot over the past 20 years.”
When did the first airships fly?
In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers of France took the first untethered, manned flight in a lighter-than-air aircraft—in this case, a hot air balloon, Grossman says. “Balloons are great, but you can’t really direct them,” he explains. “They depend on the wind. So the hunt was on for a dirigible capable of being steered.”
Nevertheless, militaries quickly saw benefits in using hot air balloons. The French military used them as early as 1794 for reconnaissance during the French Revolutionary Wars. Both the Union and the Confederacy used tethered hot air balloons for similar purposes in the American Civil War.
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin of Germany, who served as a military observer during the Civil War, saw this in 1863. He went back to Germany excited about the possible uses of the technology. Zeppelin completed his first airship—known as a zeppelin—in 1899. The first flight took place in the summer of 1900. “That was the first really successful, steerable, controllable, practical, usable airship. And it just took off from there,” Grossman says. Zeppelin continued to refine and improve his rigid airship, and began offering passenger flights for revenue around 1910.
By the time World War I broke out in 1914, Grossman says, Zeppelin and other companies “were building aircraft that could fly hundreds, or thousands of miles, could stay up in the air for days … [and] could carry huge payloads.” This was far superior to what airplanes could do at the time. The U.S. Navy began operating blimps during and after World War I, patrolling the coast to detect and deter submarine threats.
The most famous blimp in the world—manufactured by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.—made its debut in 1925. Named “Pilgrim,” the first Goodyear blimp was also the first helium-filled non-rigid airship (earlier blimps used hydrogen). Its envelope—the part that inflates—was made of rubber.
In the 1920s and 1930s, airships were an efficient and fashionable way of traveling. The first transatlantic airship trip took place in 1928 on the Graf Zeppelin. It took the 40 crew members and 20 passengers 111 hours and 44 minutes to cross the ocean.
Why did blimps fall out of favor?
In 1936, the Zeppelin company completed work on its LZ-129 airship, better known as the Hindenburg. At 803.8 feet long, the airship and its sister ship, the LZ-130, remain the largest objects ever to fly. The Hindenburg’s first flights included a transatlantic flight in May, a trip to the Berlin Olympics in August, and serving as a Nazi propaganda vehicle throughout the year. By the end of the year, the Hindenburg had made 34 trips between Germany and the United States, carrying more than 3,500 passengers and more than 66,000 pounds of mail and freight.
At the end of its first North American flight of 1937, the Hindenburg crashed in Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, killing 13 of the 36 passengers, 22 of the 61 crew members and a civilian member of the ground handling team.
According to Grossman, the Hindenburg disaster coincided with the end of rigid airship travel. “Everyone thinks the Hindenburg brought the airship era to an end, but the truth is that Hindenburg was obsolete when it first flew,” he explains. “Up until the mid- to late 1930s, there were no airplanes that had anywhere near the performance capability of airships. Airships could carry more, could go farther. They just had greater capability and performance in every way over airplanes, until … the two lines crossed and all of a sudden, you had airplanes that could do more than airships.”
Interestingly, the most famous blimp brand in the world no longer has a blimp. In 2011, Goodyear introduced the NT (New Technology) model, a semi-rigid airship designed with Zeppelin. Goodyear’s last (actual) blimp was retired in 2017.
What are the advantages of blimps?
Blimps have several advantages over other aircraft, such as their range, endurance and fuel efficiency, Grossman says. “Airships don’t need to burn fuel simply to stay in the air,” he explains. Instead, their lighter-than-air buoyancy keeps them aloft. “Every other kind of aircraft needs to consume fuel—even if it doesn’t go anywhere—which A, is expensive and B, [is problematic because] there’s only so much [fuel] you can carry at one time.”
While helicopters can hover in a manner similar to blimps, they do burn fuel when they stay in one place, they’re much louder and they have a huge downwash—that massive rush of air hitting anything beneath it, Grossman says. Blimps, on the other hand, are quiet and don’t have a potentially destructive downwash. What’s more, helicopters can only stay in the air for a few hours at a time before needing to refuel, while a blimp can stay up for days.
This ability to stay in the air for long periods of time without burning fuel makes blimps ideal for advertising and television broadcasts. In fact, the first Goodyear blimp with an illuminated sign made its debut in 1930. A decade later, three of the company’s blimps were equipped with a record player, microphone and loudspeaker in order to “blimpcast” recordings and live messages to the public below. In 1955, the first nationally televised broadcast from a Goodyear blimp took place at the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California.
What are modern uses of blimps?
Though airships are no longer used for passenger travel, blimps are by no means obsolete, and have multiple modern uses. In addition to being used for advertising and television broadcasting, blimps can be used for telecommunications after a natural disaster.
“Let’s say you have an area where the infrastructure has been damaged by an earthquake or hurricane or some other disaster,” Grossman says. “An airship can float over that area for days at a time, providing things like internet connectivity and cellular communication.” While this isn’t happening a lot right now, “it’s definitely something that people are thinking about and probably will use a lot more in the future,” he says.
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About the expert
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Sources:
- Dan Grossman, phone interview, May 1, 2025.
- Dan Grossman/Airships.net. “Airships, dirigibles, zeppelins, & blimps: What’s the difference?”
- Dan Grossman/Airships.net. “Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin”
- Goodyear. “History”
- Dan Grossman/Airships.net. “Graf Zeppelin history”
- Dan Grossman/Airships.net. “LZ-129 Hindenburg: A Detailed History”
