
A Goodyear Blimp, circa 1960. The airships have acted as huge, floating billboards for Goodyear tires since 1925.
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It is a glowing afternoon and the Goodyear Blimp is cruising above the southern shoreline of Los Angeles, just a few miles from its base within the suburb of Carson, Calif.
The airship’s slender gondola, which has seats for eight passengers, is slightly underneath the scale of a college bus and has a gobsmacking, 360-degree view. Dolphins bounce over waves and seals flop off a floating dock beneath.

Goodyear Chief Pilot Taylor Deen steers the blimp above Los Angeles’ southern shoreline.
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There isn’t any door separating the cockpit from the remainder of the craft, so a dizzying show of buttons, switches and levers is on full view. One in all them, the “Weight On Wheels” swap (it activates the transponder permitting air visitors management to trace the blimp in flight) is fittingly labeled “WOW.”
Grabbing headlines — and the general public’s consideration
The Goodyear Blimp has been wowing folks for a century, although it is modified fairly a bit since Goodyear’s first branded blimp, The Pilgrim, began bobbing gracefully throughout American skies in 1925. Again then, it was a real blimp — that’s, a large, smooth balloon filled with helium. In the present day’s Goodyear blimps — the corporate has a trio of the airships unfold throughout Ohio, California and Florida — are nonetheless helium-filled. However they’ve a semi-rigid body which helps buildings like their tail fins and engines.
Although different firms constructed airships way back to the late nineteenth century for each army and business makes use of, Goodyear’s blimps turned among the most well-known after they debuted.

A Goodyear blimp lands on high of the Emerson & Orme constructing in Washington, D.C., in 1928 — one of many many publicity stunts the tire firm undertook to attract consideration to its model.
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Firm
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The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Firm
“Rapidly, these blimps started showing everywhere in the United States over parades, throughout holidays and main occasions,” mentioned John Geoghegan, the creator of When Giants Dominated the Sky, a e-book about airships. “That is how they captured the creativeness of the general public.”
Goeghegan mentioned a string of headline-grabbing publicity stunts additionally helped deliver the Goodyear Blimp into the general public sphere, such because the day in 1928 when one landed on the roof of a division retailer in Akron, Ohio. “And naturally that {photograph} ran in newspapers all throughout the USA,” Geoghegan mentioned.
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Quickly there have been airship toys, airship postage stamps, and airship songs. Early movies captured the posh of long-distance journey by Zeppelin — German craft, which have been a lot larger than blimps and had a inflexible body.
Additionally they used a extra available — and extra flammable — gasoline. Hydrogen.
Disasters preserve airships within the public eye
The general public’s carefree fascination with airships dimmed within the Nineteen Thirties after lethal accidents began making headlines. Most famously: The Hindenburg.
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The big Zeppelin airship, which held about 100 folks, was ending up a transatlantic flight in New Jersey in 1937. Nobody is aware of precisely what occurred. However because it gracefully floated right down to the bottom, the hydrogen caught fireplace, all of a sudden exploding. Thirty-six folks have been killed. Your entire surprising spectacle was captured by the mass media of the day.
“Individuals noticed this huge tragedy occurring form of proper earlier than their eyes within the newsreels in theaters and on radio,” mentioned Nationwide Air and Area Museum Curator Emeritus Tom Crouch. “So it is one thing folks bear in mind.”
An promoting, event-covering icon
The Hindenburg catastrophe meant that the glamorous period of economic passenger journey on airships was over.
However blimps and different airships continued to hover on the perimeters of the general public creativeness in films, books and songs. The Goodyear Blimp had lengthy been used as a large commercial for the corporate. Within the post-war years, Goodyear intensified its efforts, working to get the model in entrance of as many peculiar, tire-buying Individuals as potential.
“We fly decrease than we have to, we fly slower than we have to, as a result of it is a huge billboard for Goodyear,” mentioned Goodyear spokesperson Dan Smith. “We would like folks to see it.”

Beginning within the mid-Nineteen Fifties, the Goodyear blimp supplied a automobile for the dwell TV protection of sports activities occasions, such because the annual Rose Bowl recreation in Pasadena, Calif. pictured right here in 1978.
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The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Firm
The blimp has additionally change into an integral a part of dwell TV sports activities protection starting within the Nineteen Fifties. The airships supplied a groundbreaking aerial platform for the protection of the Tremendous Bowl and the World Collection, amongst different occasions, including to the spectacle.
Hollywood took observe: The blimp was pivotal to the climax of the 1977 thriller Black Sunday. Within the film, a terrorist group makes an attempt to explode a Goodyear blimp because it hovers over the Tremendous Bowl.
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Cultural nostalgia
Blimps nonetheless sometimes present up within the tradition — although now they’re usually steeped in nostalgia for the times when airships dominated American skies, resembling with the 2023 steam-punky Airship: Kingdoms Adrift online game.
There are are additionally a handful of blimps which can be leased by firms across the nation for promoting or surveillance. However another acquainted blimps — just like the MetLife blimp — have pale away. There is a worldwide scarcity of helium, which makes every journey very costly.
But there have been indicators that airships would possibly make a comeback. Up to now couple of years, firms within the U.S. and world wide resembling Lighter Than Air Analysis, based by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, have introduced plans to launch a brand new era of economic airships.
As for the Goodyear blimp — its footprint is not what it as soon as was. The corporate’s airships helped cowl greater than 120 dwell occasions in 2014. In 2024, they coated fewer than 70. However Goodyear’s Smith says the corporate plans to up its presence for its centennial yr.
“You are going to be arduous pressed to not discover the Goodyear Blimp someplace close to you this yr,” he mentioned.
The blimp can also be attracting a brand new era of followers — largely by means of social media. It has almost 140,000 followers on Instagram.

Madison Opdahl and Niklas Tostar are huge blimp followers. Goodyear invited them to take a trip in response to Tostar’s many blimp-related posts on social media.
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“ It is at all times enjoyable to see the blimp flying round,” mentioned Madison Opdahl, a 27-year-old Los Angeles transplant, who not too long ago acquired to take a trip within the blimp in honor of its one centesimal anniversary together with her school buddy Niklas Tostar.
“We ship images of the blimp at any time when we see it to one another,” Tostar mentioned. “We’ll be at work or wherever the state of affairs is, and it is simply form of a operating inside joke, but in addition on the similar time slightly bit critical that we just like the blimp a lot.”
Jennifer Vanasco edited the audio and digital variations of this story. Chloee Weiner combined the audio.