An airship is something that can capture the hearts of everyone, regardless of whether they care about aviation or not. There’s just something amazing about a giant cigar-shaped cylinder gently floating through the sky that gets everyone to look up. If you’re in America, I have good news, because there are at least seven airships flying above American cities. It’s been a decade since you last had this good a chance at seeing a blimp in the wild.
This news comes to us from an Instagram Reel of Alex Dainis, PhD. Dainis typically produces fascinating and approachable videos about science, but she also frequently takes detours to nerd out about blimps. I can’t even blame her. I got to take my first-ever ride in a Goodyear Blimp back in the summer, and it was a truly unforgettable experience.
But even if you cannot score a ride in one of these majestic airships, just seeing one is also really awesome. The great news about that is that there are at least seven blimps that you can see floating around America right now! If you’re a blimp fan, get excited, because it’s been a long time since there has been this much blimp-age!
Goodyear’s Wingfoots
The first three airships that you can see flying around America right now are Goodyear’s trio of advertising airships, N1A ‘Wingfoot One‘, N2A ‘Wingfoot Two‘, and N3A ‘Wingfoot Three‘. Now, I wrote a detailed story about the history of the Goodyear Blimp (the word “blimp” is capitalized here because that’s how Goodyear markets its airships), and you can read about that by clicking here.
I’ll get this out of the way right now and remind you that Goodyear’s blimps aren’t real blimps. All blimps are airships, but not all airships are blimps. A blimp is a non-rigid airship, one where the shape of the envelope is maintained by the lifting gas. The Goodyear Blimp used to be a real blimp, but since 2014, Goodyear has been flying Zeppelin NT (Neue Technologie) airships by Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik. These airships are actually semi-rigid as they employ an internal 12-rib framework that helps maintain their envelopes’ shape and allows the engines to be mounted high.
However, Goodyear still calls these blimps because “Goodyear Blimp” is an outrageously strong brand name. Anyway, here’s what I wrote about where Goodyear’s airships currently live:
Goodyear says that its first Zeppelin NT, Wingfoot One, was built in 2014. Its next sibling, Wingfoot Two, was built in 2016. Finally, Wingfoot Three was built in 2018. Wingfoot One is stationed near Akron, Ohio, while Wingfoot Two lives near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Wingfoot Three is stationed near Los Angeles, California. There’s also a fourth blimp that Goodyear operates that’s stationed in Germany.
Goodyear’s airships don’t just stay in one place. They are known for flying across America to different events. Goodyear brought Wingfoot One and Wingfoot Two to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2025 to celebrate 100 years of Goodyear airships. I was honored to be a guest aboard Wingfoot One.
What’s really cool is that Goodyear publishes a schedule for its airships, so you can figure out if there will be one flying near you. Click here to check it out.
Alright, so that leaves us with the other four. Who else is flying a blimp right now?
Advertising Blimps
One airship is registered as N614LG. This airship is a 2002 American Blimp Corporation A60R, and it flew from Tennessee to California. Currently, it can be found floating around Los Angeles, advertising the film Marty Supreme. The American Blimp Corporation has been around since 1987, and, true to its name, makes real non-rigid blimps. The A60R, which has been in production since 1989, has two engines, seats five in its gondola, and has a 69,000 cubic foot envelope.
N614LG is owned by Skyship Services, Inc., in Windermere, Florida. This is a full-service airship company providing airships for advertising, surveillance, and other uses.
The airship was previously owned by Lighter than Air (LTA) Research, which is based in Akron, Ohio, Mountain View, California, Sunnyvale, California, and Gardnerville, Nevada. LTA’s whole deal is to develop next-generation zero-emission airships to speed up disaster response in areas that are unreachable by boats or fixed-wing aircraft.
N157LG (above and below) is an American Blimp Corporation A-1-70G, and Skyship Services owns this one as well. This one is also a real blimp, and it can carry a total of 10 people, has two engines, and has a 170,297 cubic foot envelope. This airship tends to be used for advertising, but it currently doesn’t have any advertising and was last seen just flying around Dallas, Texas. In the recent past, N157LG advertised Dick’s Sporting Goods and Subway.
But Wait, There’s More!
Dainis notes that what makes 2025 different is the fact that, unlike pretty much any other time in the past decade, there are at least two more airships flying around America right now. Remember LTA Research? Well, that company is running two of its own airships out of San Francisco right now.
One of them is N620LG, a 2002 American Blimp Corporation A60R that used to be an advertising blimp, but is now being used for LTA’s testing. Check out this video:
The other is N125LT, which is LTA’s homegrown Pathfinder 1 airship. Pathfinder 1 was unveiled in 2023, and it’s a rigid airship. That means it has a complete superstructure. What’s awesome about the Pathfinder 1 is that it’s currently the biggest modern aircraft in the world, measuring at 406.5 feet long and 66 feet wide.
To put that size into perspective, a Boeing 747-800 is 250 feet long. The Pathfinder 1 is huge, but it isn’t as big as history’s largest airships. The LZ 129 Hindenburg was a whopping 804 feet long.
LTA’s Pathfinder 1 flew indoors in 2023 before flying over San Francisco for the first time in May 2025. So, there’s a lot of buzz about this airship right now because, I mean, when was the last time you’ve seen a 400-foot-long airship buzzing around the Bay?
LTA Research says its journey began in 2013 when Google co-founder Sergey Brin and former NASA director Alan Weston joined forces to modernize the airship. The pair were disappointed that the last Navy airship was built in 1960 and that airships aren’t used for carrying passengers or cargo anymore. Dr. Weston and Brin believe that airships are the future of air transportation because they can deliver people and cargo anywhere in the world without road infrastructure, airports, or seaports. So, inspired by NASA’s own exploits with airships, the pair founded LTA and got to work.
Here’s what LTA says its mission is:
We are developing advanced technologies to dramatically increase the capabilities and lower the cost of 21st century airships. With these next-generation airships, we strive to improve humanitarian aid delivery and reduce carbon emissions, while providing economic opportunity and new jobs to Americans. LTA airships will have the ability to complement — and even speed up — humanitarian disaster response and relief efforts, especially in remote areas that cannot be easily accessed by plane and boat due to limited or destroyed infrastructure. We ultimately aim to create a family of aircraft with zero emissions that, when used for shipping goods and moving people, would substantially reduce the global carbon footprint of aviation.
In 2014, Dr. Alan Weston began researching continuing airship development by digging through Akron, Ohio’s archives, by talking with engineers at Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH, and by chatting with Goodyear’s engineers.
The result is a modern reworking of an idea that’s more than a century old. The Pathfinder 1 envelope features 13 circular main frame ribs made out of 3,000 welded titanium hubs and 10,000 carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer tubes. Inside, it houses 13 helium gas bags made from a ripstop nylon base fabric and a urethane cover. It’s pushed through the sky with an orchestra of 12 electric motors that were developed with Pipistrel Aircraft.
Other parts include a gondola designed with Zeppelin and a landing gear adapted from the Zeppelin NT. All of it is controlled by a fly-by-wire system developed by LTA’s engineers. The Pathfinder 1, which is only the first of three Pathfinder airships to be built, is designed to be flown by a single pilot with a joystick, the thrust-vectoring motors, and four rudders.
So, it sounds like this thing is at the cutting edge of airship design. Apparently, Pathfinder 3 will be even larger and will preview LTA’s plans to put its airship design into production. Admittedly, I’m not sold on the idea of airships being the future of air transportation – even LTA’s airship is still slow – but I can see them working for disaster relief.
It’s A Good Time To Love Airships
Either way, I’m not really here to litigate that. I just want to tell you how awesome it is that there are at least seven airships flying around America right now. The reason why I say “at least” is that there are roughly a dozen or so airships still registered in America, so you might even see one that I didn’t note here.
It’s a great time to love blimps! It’s pretty common and standard for Goodyear to fly its blimps, so that’s not surprising. It’s also common to see the occasional advertising blimp. But since there are startups that are obsessed with making airships mainstream again, now you get more chances to see one. Remember, LTA Research isn’t even alone in this field. There’s a guy who wants to park a huge floating warehouse above Los Angeles.
But for now, four of America’s operational airships could be found in California at different times, and the others can be found in Florida, Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere. So, if you love blimps, be sure to look up into the sky and check out apps like SkyCards. Who knows, maybe a fun airship may be near you soon!
Top graphic images: Mercedes Streeter; LTA Research
One of the Goodyear blimps was in San Diego 2 weekends ago. It was using Gillespie field as it’s “base”, and I believe was flying over the Snapdragon Stadium. What’s between those two.. my house. It flew directly over my house while I was working on my Bullitt in the driveway. Very cool to see it go directly overhead.
Got to see all 3 of the Goodyear airships flying together over Akron for the 100th anniversary this summer. Have some dashcam footage of them, too.
Back In The Days of the other website, I got a pic of The Traveling Torchbug with N1A at it’s home airstrip at Wingfoot Lake.
I was around 10 or 12 when my dad came home one night with tickets for a ride on the Goodyear blimp (he had won some promotional giveaway). I do not recall which one, but i am sure it was neither of the ones mentioned in this article (edit: i’m pretty sure it was Columbia). I still remember the ride well as it was so incredibly quiet and smooth, and unobstructed views for just shy of 360 degrees. The gondola was quite small, maybe seating 12 passengers? I recall the pilot saying that when they filmed football games they could only have the pilot, copilot and one cameraman onboard because of the weight of the equipment.
“Uhhhhh, hello airplanes? Yeah it’s blimps. You win. Bye!”
I used to work across the street from American Blimp in Hillsboro and saw the Fuji Film Blimp all the time. I also remember the Road & Track test of a Goodyear Blimp in the 70s
This just makes me want to find my copy of Crimson Skies again.
That game needs a remaster.
You had to bring that up. I have many fond memories of trying to fly a Balmoral through the train tunnels in Pacifica. Made it once. Wings and tail were red, but I did it!
H.P. Hood Dairy Company used to have the “Hoodyear Blimp” that flew around New England. Does that still exist? Or is it just one of those advertising company blimps?
I had a Goodyear Blimp model hanging in my room when I was a teen in the late 70’s – the one with the lights and rotating message board:
https://www.ebay.com/shop/goodyear-blimp-model?_nkw=goodyear+blimp+model
Haven’t thought about that in decades – Thanks for the memory!
Also loved seeing the blimps cruising over San Francisco when I lived there in the 90’s -early 2000s – when there was still the blimp hanger down on the Peninsula at Moffett.
Grew up in Akron. The Blimp was (and still is) a welcome sight. Lots of memories as a kid of rushing to the window at night when hearing that distinctive sound, or running around the house during the day looking for the obvious source of the noise. Loved it then, love it now.
They make great blimps. I had a miniature inflatable Goodyear blimp hanging from my basement ceiling for 15 years and it was still holding air when it went to the dump.
Thats quality!
I still have mine from when I was a kid. Had it hanging from my bedroom light and absolutely loved it. Unfortunately she won’t hold air anymore.
I grew up right next to Spring, TX, in the 80s and I would love it when we drove past the Goodyear hangar and the blimp was out or even just visible through the open doors!
“There Are At Least Seven Airships Floating Around The USA Right Now, So Keep Your Eyes Peeled”
FIFY Goodyear’s delusional marketeers can do what they want. That doesn’t mean anyone else has to cater to their nonsense.
For some inside baseball, we/our editors often write the headlines for a more general audience. Most people think of these airships as “blimps,” even if they’re like the Goodyear ones and aren’t actually blimps. That’s why I spent some time in the body to explain that not all airships are blimps.
Granted, Goodyear really isn’t helping people identify the difference between a blimp and a semi-rigid airship, since its website has “blimp” all over it.
I appreciate that explanation was in the body of the text but headlines are the first thing one sees and maybe the only thing someone might see. I think you could have just as easily used the word airship in the title and lost none of the meaning. Or used quotes since as you said only Goodyear semi-rigid airships are referred to as “blimps”. To my eye capitalizing blimp to Blimp looks too much like a typing error rather than an intended change.
Is this too pedantic for the mainstream? Perhaps. But this is The Autopian and I think it deserves a higher standard.
Only pedants care about the difference between a non-rigid, semi-rigid, or rigid airship in terms of what people call the damned things. Normal people are just going to call all of them “blimps”.
So? That doesn’t mean Goodyear’s marketing bullshit has to fester here. People like balloons too, why not market them as “balloons”? Or how about”clouds”, “kites” or “birds”?
Marketing bullshit like this is how words like organic lost any real meaning. Synthetic is quickly losing its meaning and if a generation of kids educated by Pokemon isn’t corrected so will “evolution”.
But if it makes you happy:
“There Are At Least Seven “Blimps”* Floating Around The USA Right Now, So Keep Your Eyes Peeled.
*Goodyear’s “blimps” aren’t real blimps. Why? Because that’s how Goodyear markets it’s airships to people who don’t care.”
Feel better now?
I felt fine in the first place, because getting bent about Goodyear still calling their new semi-rigids “blimps” is the sort of thing pedantic twats do, not me. “Goodyear Blimp” is an absolutely iconic bit of marketing, and they would be complete and utter idiots to stop using it even if they went to a recreation of the Hindenburg with an advertising sign on it the size of the Empire State Building.
And given they are only semi-rigid, they are still, IMHO, blimps anyway as some/much of the envelope is shaped by pressure alone, just not all of it.
You do you.
Now if you’ll excuse me I have some “clouds” to yell at.
Make sure you tell those damned kids to stay off your lawn too. 🙂
Oh, they know!
Maybe I read the article too fast but you have a missed opportunity to discuss thermal airships (or hot air airships). Instead of helium or hydrogen, they operate like a hot air balloon by heating the air inside of the envelope to remain lighter than air. They differ from a hot air balloon in that they also have an engine and propeller to steer like a normal gas airship. Since hot air is less efficient than hydrogen or helium, they cannot lift as much weight and can only stay in the air for a short period of time (due to both weather and propane storage limitations). There are even American balloon manufacturers that produce them like Cameron Balloons.
Cameron Balloons aren’t an American company – they’re based in Bristol in the UK. But they do make thermal airships!
https://www.cameronballoons.co.uk/
Then I will include the missing letters at the end, Cameron Balloons US. While Cameron started in the UK, there exists an independent US counterpart that produces balloons here.
https://www.cameronballoons.com/
Well, that sent me down an enormous rabbit hole. I’ve been digging through company filings, skimming books about the history of sport ballooning, and looking at archived websites from 1997.
The most authoritative source I could find was this one, which is an autobiographical piece from one of the founders of what become Cameron Balloons US:
https://www.nationalballoonmuseum.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/TC-HOF-2022-revised-5262022-.pdf
Based on company filings the business started off as a balloon flying company – Aerostatica Inc. They then moved into balloon repairs and also became a dealer for Cameron Balloons in the UK. They started doing business as “Cameron Balloons – US” in 1974.
Later on the owner of Cameron Balloons in the UK asked them to build balloons under his US type certificate, but that wasn’t allowed. So they got their own.
As far as I can see Cameron Balloons US remains a dealer for Cameron Balloons UK as well as a manufacturer in its own right.
However, by the looks of it neither Cameron Balloons US or UK actually is responsible for the airships. While Cameron Balloons UK does mention Don Cameron having flown a thermal airship in the 1970s, both websites reference the same model numbers, and the operating instructions – and type approval – come from a different (and defunct) German company called Gefa Flug:
https://www.cameronballoons.co.uk/c/download/GEFA-FLUG-GD4-GD6-Flight-Manual.pdf
so all in all it’s an incredibly confusing picture. And I need a better hobby.
We don’t get many airships in Bristol, but pretty much every Friday evening in the summer, there’ll be a group of hot-air balloons drifting across the city.
Poor, misguided Subway; their advertising vehicle was itself an ad for the competition.
There’s ALSO a salad-in-a-loaf-of-bread restaurant called “Bread Zeppelin”
https://breadzeppelin.com/
Do they still indicate Ice Cube’s pimp status?
I actually know the answer to this one: when the flying aircraft carrier USS Macon was based at Moffett Field near Mountain View before it crashed in 1935.
I remember in the early 1990’s, when I was outside for gym class in high school in the western suburbs of Chicago, we’d occasionally see the MetLife blimp… I wonder what happened to that one?
I had the good fortune of having the west coast Goodyear blimp fly past my house a few months ago on its way back south from Seattle. It was hard to track on flightaware due to flying relatively low. It also moved faster than I expected it to. The online schedule seems to be very general and not entirely accurate.
I hear that there used to be fewer blimps needed to cover events, but inflation is real.
Terrible, just terrible.
Take your smiley.
Fact: The Goodyear Blimp is the greatest motor vehicle ever used for marketing and promotion. Yup, I’ll even place it ahead of the Weinermobile.
If Oscar Mayer really wanted to do it right, they’d get one of the other blimps like the SubWay one pictured above. Always thought Trojan should have had one, too.
Marty Supreme approves.
Weird timing on this post, since I just attended a lunchtime roundtable where the CEO of LTA was discussing Pathfinder.
I’m amazed the German company still uses the word Zeppelin. I still associate it with the Hindenburg rather than the band. I suppose it was named after a person, but still.
It’s effectively still the same company.
I’ll forever be a wee bit sad that airship transportation ceased to really be a thing after the Hindenburg. I just like the idea of traveling from one place to another just for the sake of enjoying the travel and not getting there as fast as humanly possible.
Honestly, if given enough time, I’d probably rather take a slow and scenic airship ride across America than board a commercial flight. But I suspect that people like you and me are a weird minority. 🙂
I’m in that group, especially if there is real food and espresso and a WIFI connection. There is an S/F book by David Brin called Earth and all the tourist travel in that future is via blimps.
You can always take Amtrak – that is bound to be slower than an airship.
I like the idea, and could get into it if the cost vs comfort vs time equation balanced out… The idea of basic economy density for any longer than absolutely necessary makes me way more interested in going as fast as humanly possible.
This one flew over my house the other day: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=marty+supreme+blimp&t=opera&ia=images&iax=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FIDpiZpjvSGs%2Fmaxresdefault.jpg …it’s promotional for a movie is what I gather. I assume they were getting footage of it going past the Hollywood sign, but I didn’t see another aircraft or drone nearby, so maybe they were just sightseeing while promoting the movie.