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Matt Miller/DN
Above, the ground crew holds the airship steady while a group of passengers get off the
blimp after a ride Wednesday evening. Below, the city is visible from the blimp’s cockpit.
and fly
an elbow
wave
blimp pilot
When the weather’s nice, we’ll pop open a window,
By Erin Schulte
Senior Reporter
They’re like sailboats in the sky.
Leisurely bobbing 1,000 feet in the air, a
Goodyear blimp floats at the perfect height.
High enough to see an entire golf course,
but low enough to see a group of eight in
brightly-colored shirts teeing off.
High enough to see the entire city of Lin
coln with one turn of the head, but low enough
to see people waving from their balconies.
Goodyear brought the “Spirit of Akron,” one
of its three blimps (also known as airships) to
Lincoln this week to honor and promote
Lincoln’s Goodyear plant.
The plant will be making fabric for future
blimps and is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
The blimp, its pilots and ground crew members,
are in town until Friday.
This week’s visit is the first time the blimp
hogged the Lincoln skyline since a visit in 1973.
The cab of the blimp fits a maximum of six
passengers at a time, plus a captain and co-cap
tain. The small cabin resembles a shuttle bus
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with one small aisle and airplane-type blue seats.
The windows reach from floor to nearly the
ceiling, leaving passengers with a wide view of
the city or countryside below.
Mark Kynett, the airship pilot on a Wednes
day flight, said if airplanes were the speedboats
of the sky, blimps were the sailboats.
Instead of being transported in a truck, the
blimp flies everywhere it goes. It has a top speed
of 65 miles per hour, and cruising speed of
around 30.
The helium in the huge, wide-open bubble
on top of the cabin supports 99 percent of the
blimp’s weight and is propelled by two 6-foot
roaring turbine propellers.
People don’t get where they’re going very
quickly, Kynett said, but that’s not the point
“When the weather’s nice, we’ll pop open a
window, and fly with an elbow out there and
wave to people,” Kynett said.
•The sight of a 200-foot long, 60-foot tall
floating blimp brought many Lincoln residents
out in the cold wind Wednesday night near dusk
to watch the blimps’ sharply-angled takeoffs a
descents.
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About 100 carloads of people left their ve
hicles on the side of a road by Capital Aviation,
where the blimp was being stored. Clinging to
a chain link fenpe, people hauled out kids and
cameras to see the famous blimp.
Mayor Mike Johanns, who cruised in the air
ship Wednesday, dubbed the onlookers
“blimpies.”
All the people got was a glimpse of the icon,
but some said they were really hoping for a ride.
That isn’t easy, because Goodyear lets on only
a select few, including a few employees, jour
nalists and special guests.
Once there’s clearance to get a ride on the
blimp, getting in the blimp is another matter.
The whole event seems much like a dramatic
helicopter rescue: jump on quickly amidst a
swirl of violent air.
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During the craft’s rapid descent and land
ing, ground crew members rush head-on toward
the nose of the blimp, grab on to long ropes and
scatter to safety along the sides.
Two of the biggest crew members throw all
of their weight on metal bars beneath the cabin
holding the blimp down, while passengers are
hustled out of their seats, down the stairs a
onto the grou
The next passengers approach the looming
balloon one at a time, running past a heavy col
umn of air from the engines on to a floating
staircase leading to the cabin.
Once the blimp is cruising, passengers can
walk around die open cabin. In
pilots gave 30- to 40-minute rides, floating over
the capitol, the UNL campus and north on 27th
Street, then back to Capital Aviation.
Goodyear only has 15 blimp pilots to handle
their three ships, said Aaron Jenkins, a blimp
pilot for 33 years.
They make up an elite bunch, as there are
fewer than 20 blimps in the nation.
While in flight, pilots regulate the helium to
control the height of the blimp, Kynett said.
They also communicate with air traffic control
lers.
‘The blimps are semi-automatic but pilot
maintained,” he said.
Blimps, which may also be known as “zep
pelins” or “dirigibles,” got their start in the air
during World Wars I and n. Jenkins said they
would escort Navy convoys and scout for sub
marines in the water.
Helicopters created ripples, clouding the
surface, but smooth-floating blimps could see
into the water, he said. No Navy conveys ac
companied by blimps were ever torpedoed,
Jenkins said.
After the wars, Goodyear, the blimps’ maker,
bought them back and painted the company’s
name on the side for a publicity stunt The rest
is marketing history, Jenkins said.
“It was so effective for
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and ad
vertising that they’ve always kept it up.
Mm Miller/DN
Hie Cornell family (left)1 and the Cropp family, both of Lincoln, watch the blimp through
a fence on the side of the road by Capital Aviation.