- You know, everybody likes to see a blimp.
It's just so big, you can't miss it.
It's so unique to watch,
and they're not even a national icon but a world icon.
Folks all over the world know the Goodyear Blimp.
It's such a unique piece of aviation history.
- It's such a small niche of aviation
that I didn't even realize that this job existed, really,
until I found it.
- It's always challenging, and it's super fun.
Yeah, it's all I want to do the rest of my career.
- [Narrator] The Goodyear Blimp
has been flying for 100 years.
The company began building its own airships in 1919.
- I'd like to tow you and your team
of surfboard riders behind the airship.
- Gee, I'd love to try that.
What do you say, boys?
- Let's go!
- [Narrator] The blimp's primary objective?
To be an aerial ambassador
for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.
But the blimp that flies today isn't technically a blimp.
From 1919 to 2014,
it was a blimp, classified as a nonrigid airship,
meaning that its balloon, or envelope,
had no internal structure.
But in 2014, in collaboration with the Zeppelin company
in Germany, Goodyear began flying a new model,
incorporating a structure made of carbon fiber
and aluminum inside of the envelope,
classifying the airship as semirigid.
The cost of the updated airship
is reportedly around $20 million.
- It's such a tremendous leap forward for us
because having the structure inside,
being able to connect everything to that structure,
the flight control system, just an all-around
tremendous improvement for us over the previous models.
- [Narrator] Another key addition to the new model:
four powerful propellers that can swivel
to create both lift and thrust.
- So if you point them straight up towards the sky,
they hold you up like a helicopter,
and if you point them forward,
they pull you along like an airplane,
and infinitely adjustable anywhere in between there.
- [Narrator] And an especially welcome addition
to the updated blimp: a lavatory,
which the previous models did not have.
Even though it's no longer technically a blimp, don't worry.
The company isn't going to refer to it
as the Goodyear semirigid airship.
It's going to remain known as the Goodyear Blimp.
- I'm Jeff Capek.
I'm the chief pilot here
at the Goodyear Pompano Beach Airship Base.
I learned how to fly the same way everybody does here.
We hire pilots that are already fixed-wing or helicopter
pilots, and then we train them in-house to fly airships.
It could take anywhere from six months
to maybe a little over a year
to teach a pilot how to fly an airship.
- Everybody's got a little different path,
but my story's a little bit unique
in that I started as a contractor for Goodyear,
working mostly cutting grass at the hangar.
I have a picture of me when I was 7 years old
looking in the blimp at someplace that it parked near
where I lived at the time.
It was just such a cool, unique experience, you know,
and one that you remember for forever.
And then to come back and get the opportunity
to fly them later in life, it was really cool.
- [Narrator] We joined the crew of the Goodyear Blimp
on a Friday morning at the blimp base
in Pompano Beach, Florida, about 40 miles north of Miami.
The blimp and its crew of 20 were preparing to travel
over 200 miles north to Daytona to provide aerial coverage
for NASCAR at the Daytona International Speedway.
The blimp flies there, but the crew has to drive.
- About 20 of us go on the road with it together.
We've got a semitruck, which is kind of like
a rolling maintenance shop, so we travel pretty heavy.
- [Narrator] Three and a half hours later,
the crew sets up for the blimp to land
at a small airport in New Smyrna, just outside Daytona.
The crew loads the gondola with extra ballast
to keep it grounded.
That's because the blimp is easily moved by the wind,
and because of this, it needs a big parking spot.
- We really need a pretty big spot to park this thing
because it does have to be able to spin 360 degrees,
and the airship itself is almost 250 feet long,
so we need a minimum of a 500-foot clear circle
because it'll go around in circles all day long.
- [Narrator] After landing, the ground crew
connects the nose of the blimp to a mast.
- [Pilot] On the top of the mast, there's a cup up there
which receives a nose probe in the nose of the ship.
So that probe fits into the cup in the top of the mast,
and it locks it in there, which holds the ship
on the ground when we're not flying it.
- [Narrator] The blimp's envelope
is filled with 300,000 cubic feet of helium.
But its engines require fuel.
- [Pilot] It's called Avgas.
It's 100 octane leaded fuel.
It's the same fuel that every
piston-powered aircraft runs on.
This ship will hold 825 kilos in three separate tanks,
one tank for each engine.
- [Narrator] People driving down the highway
pull over to watch the blimp take off.
But it wasn't just people that were interested
in getting a closer look at the blimp.
- [Pilot] When it's time to take off,
we move this yellow lever,
swivel that up to between 60 and 90 degrees,
and then added thrust, which creates the lift
to lift us off the ground like a helicopter.
Once we lift it off the ground,
we slowly swivel this yellow lever forward,
which starts creating forward air speed,
and the ship starts to fly aerodynamically.
- [Narrator] The flight from New Smyrna
to the Daytona Speedway takes about 20 minutes.
The gondola has room for 12 passengers,
including the camera operator and his equipment.
- NASCAR is one of our more challenging events we do.
You've got a dynamic of the ship moving around,
the cars moving around, so it can be a challenge at times
to keep the cars framed in.
- [Narrator] The blimp's camera is mounted
on the front of the gondola and is reportedly
worth between $400,000 and $500,000.
The pilots also have a monitor in the cockpit
so they can see the action below
and make adjustments if necessary.
- We started off circling the track,
and then the camera operator requested us
to stop in this position here.
It's just a good spot that works well
with this camera and the sun angle.
- So one of the cool parts about what the blimp can do
is that it can actually just kinda sit perfectly still.
I mean, we are about 1,500 feet in the air right now,
but we are parked, essentially,
just sitting over the speedway.
- [Pilot] We swivel the side engines up,
which sort of makes the ship act as a helicopter,
and can hover in one spot right here.
The max altitude technically
for this blimp is 10,000 feet.
I doubt we'll ever go that high though.
We normally stay around 1,000 to 2,000 feet.
We like to be nice and low where people can see us.
- [Narrator] After around five hours in the sky,
it was time to head home.
So is it fun to fly the Goodyear Blimp?
- It's awesome.
Feeling like you're flying a boat around in the sky,
with the technology and capability in this one,
it's so much fun to fly.
- Great job again today, guys.
All of our preparation looks like it's paying off.
So the race went perfectly, the weather
held out great for us, ship's been great,
and we finished a little bit earlier
than we thought we would, so good for us.
All right, have a good night.
See you guys later.
Break.
- The pilots are only a small piece,
and really, without the crew and the support staff,
the airships wouldn't go anywhere, so those are the guys
that really do the work behind the scenes
that nobody realizes happens,
and the logistics that go into moving an airship
down the road and maintaining a safe,
world-class operation is not a small task.