Goodyear Blimp Part 2: How Many Pilots Does it Take to Fly the New Goodyear Airship?
Released on 08/29/2014
(mid-tempo music)
[Narrator] There are lots of new features
in the new Goodyear blimp.
The old airship was built on 1930s technology, was redone
in the '60s, but the new ship
is more like an airplane.
Flying experience in this airship versus
the old one is almost 180 degrees out.
The old one being old technology,
force-feedback controls, literally cables
that go out to the fins.
Where you have a wheel on the side,
you have rudder pedals that you're pushing.
[Michael] so this one, where it's almost
like a big video game, with the joystick controls,
all electronic feedback.
With the old airship,
you have basically 20 people running at you
trying to get the airship on to the ground and stabilize it.
Then they pull the airship into the wind,
so that it can get on the mast and sit there for the night.
And the older ships, they travel with 22 people,
it's gonna be five pilots, and 15 to 16 crew members.
Now with the newer airship, we're going to be able to travel
with a little bit less crew, probably around 14 or 15.
We have five pilots on each operation,
about 15 pilots in the company.
With those five pilots, only two can be in the airship.
So the other three are monitoring weather,
any sort of changes in the weather,
and anything that may pop up.
(mid-tempo music)
In order to be a good blimp pilot,
you have to have patience.
Once you're in the air, you aren't going anywhere fast.
We take off, we could be in the air
from anywhere from six hours all the way to 14, 15 hours.
The max endurance on this airship is 48 hours in the air.
The blimps are certified to fly up to 10,000 feet,
but generally we fly about a 1,000 to 1,500 feet
above the ground, depending on the operation.
Speeds between 30 and 40 miles an hour.
(mid-tempo music)
One of the things that's really unique to the airship
is the truck and the connection point to the ground itself.
The mast truck is the only thing
that's really attaching it to the ground.
The really unique part about an airship
versus a regular airplane, helicopter, something else,
is that when it gets on the ground, it's still flying.
And because of that we have to be really careful
how we treat it, even when it's hooked
to the ground support equipment,
because any kind of a wind shift or a movement
and that thing is gonna wanna move with the wind.
Flying the blimp
isn't really like flying any other aircraft.
It's more like flying a boat really.
There's really no numbers that you fly
like you would in an airplane, or a helicopter.
Weather conditions, and wind
and everything impacts the airship so much
that you really have to literally feel
each take off and each landing,
and actually fly the aircraft.
(exuberant chime)
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Goodyear Blimp Part 2: How Many Pilots Does it Take to Fly the New Goodyear Airship?
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