I don’t care what anyone says, the Goodyear blimp will always the branded blimp for the ages. Others are just pretenders (I’m looking at you MetLife blimp … even with your adorable Snoopy imagery, I will not be swayed on this!) So it’s kind of jarring to see photos of one going down in flames, as one did in Germany yesterday.
The pilot of a zeppelin was killed and three passengers had to leap to safety when the aircraft caught fire and crashed in central Germany Sunday evening, a police spokesman said.The accident happened at the Reichelsheim aerodrome, near Friedberg in central Germany as the aircraft was coming in to land.
Two metres from the ground the pilot told his three passengers, all journalists, to jump to the ground while he tried to land safely, said a report on the Bild website, one of whose photographers had been on board.
Once the three journalists left the zeppelin, it climbed back up to 40 metres but then caught fire for reasons not yet clear, said police.
Just a few weeks ago, Goodyear announced that it had struck a deak with German zeppelin manufacturer ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik “to supply The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company with airships well into the next decade.” The blimp that went down in flames appears to be one of the new Goodyear-Zeppelin airships, which were touted in the company’s press release as “slightly larger than the airships in Goodyear’s current fleet, fly faster, carry more passengers and include state-of-the art avionics and flight control systems.”
That sounds great and all, but I’m gonna that dick who goes out on a limb to say that there might be flaws with the new models. Just saying.
Now here’s one of the most striking before and afters in blimp history…
And here’s the most annoying song about blimps ever composed…
(HT: Drew. Pics via Getty/AFP)