Look up! The Goodyear Blimp is celebrating a big birthday

It’s a sparkling afternoon and the Goodyear Blimp is cruising above the southern shoreline of Los Angeles, a few miles from its base in the suburb of Carson, Calif.

The airship’s slender gondola, which has seats for eight passengers, is a little under the size of a school bus and has a gobsmacking, 360-degree view. Dolphins bounce over waves and seals flop off a floating dock below.

There’s no door separating the cockpit from the rest of the craft, so a dizzying display of buttons, switches and levers is on full view. One of them, the “Weight On Wheels” switch (it turns on the transponder allowing air traffic control to track the blimp in flight) is fittingly labeled “WOW.”

Grabbing headlines — and the public’s attention

The Goodyear Blimp has been wowing people for a century, though it’s changed quite a bit since Goodyear’s first branded blimp, The Pilgrim, started bobbing gracefully across American skies in 1925. Back then, it was a true blimp — that is, a giant, soft balloon full of helium. Today’s Goodyear blimps — the company has a trio of the airships spread across Ohio, California and Florida — are still helium-filled. But they have a semi-rigid frame which supports structures like their tail fins and engines.

Though other companies built airships as far back as the late 19th century for both military and commercial uses, Goodyear’s blimps became some of the most famous when they debuted.

“All of a sudden, these blimps began appearing all over the United States over parades, during holidays and major events,” said John Geoghegan, the author of When Giants Ruled the Sky, a book about airships. “This is how they captured the imagination of the public.”

Goeghegan said a string of headline-grabbing publicity stunts also helped bring the Goodyear Blimp into the public sphere, such as the day in 1928 when one landed on the roof of a department store in Akron, Ohio. “And of course that photograph ran in newspapers all across the United States,” Geoghegan said.

Soon there were airship toys, airship postage stamps, and airship songs. Early films captured the luxury of long-distance travel by Zeppelin — German craft, which were much bigger than blimps and had a rigid frame.

They also used a more readily available — and more flammable — gas. Hydrogen.

Disasters keep airships in the public eye 

The public’s carefree fascination with airships dimmed in the 1930s after deadly accidents started making headlines. Most famously: The Hindenburg.

The enormous Zeppelin airship, which held about 100 people, was finishing up a transatlantic flight in New Jersey in 1937. No one knows exactly what happened. But as it gracefully floated down to the ground, the hydrogen caught fire, suddenly exploding. Thirty-six people were killed. The entire shocking spectacle was captured by the mass media of the day.

“People saw this enormous tragedy happening kind of right before their eyes in the newsreels in theaters and on radio,” said National Air and Space Museum Curator Emeritus Tom Crouch. “So it’s something people remember.”

An advertising, event-covering icon

The Hindenburg disaster meant that the glamorous era of commercial passenger travel on airships was over.

But blimps and other airships continued to hover on the edges of the public imagination in movies, books and songs. The Goodyear Blimp had long been used as a giant advertisement for the company. In the post-war years, Goodyear intensified its efforts, working to get the brand in front of as many ordinary, tire-buying Americans as possible.

“We fly lower than we need to, we fly slower than we need to, because it’s a big billboard for Goodyear,” said Goodyear spokesperson Dan Smith. “We want people to see it.”

The blimp has also become an integral part of live TV sports coverage beginning in the 1950s. The airships provided a groundbreaking aerial platform for the coverage of the Super Bowl and the World Series, among other events, adding to the spectacle.

Hollywood took note: The blimp was pivotal to the climax of the 1977 thriller Black Sunday. In the movie, a terrorist group attempts to blow up a Goodyear blimp as it hovers over the Super Bowl.

Cultural nostalgia

Blimps still occasionally show up in the culture — though now they are often steeped in nostalgia for the days when airships ruled American skies, such as with the 2023 steam-punky Airship: Kingdoms Adrift video game.

There are are also a handful of blimps that are leased by companies around the country for advertising or surveillance. But some other familiar blimps — like the MetLife blimp — have faded away. There’s a worldwide shortage of helium, which makes each trip very expensive.

Yet there have been signs that airships might make a comeback. In the past couple of years, companies in the U.S. and around the world such as Lighter Than Air Research, founded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, have announced plans to launch a new generation of commercial airships.

As for the Goodyear blimp — its footprint isn’t what it once was. The company’s airships helped cover more than 120 live events in 2014. In 2024, they covered fewer than 70. But Goodyear’s Smith says the company plans to up its presence for its centennial year.

“You’re going to be hard pressed to not find the Goodyear Blimp somewhere near you this year,” he said.

The blimp is also attracting a new generation of fans — largely through social media. It has nearly 140,000 followers on Instagram.

“ It’s always fun to see the blimp flying around,” said Madison Opdahl, a 27-year-old Los Angeles transplant, who recently got to take a ride in the blimp in honor of its 100th anniversary with her college buddy Niklas Tostar.

“We send photos of the blimp whenever we see it to each other,” Tostar said. “We’ll be at work or wherever the situation is, and it’s just kind of a running inside joke, but also at the same time a little bit serious that we like the blimp so much.”

Jennifer Vanasco edited the audio and digital versions of this story. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.