Whenever I fly, I try to get a window seat. Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated with looking down at the geographical wonders that constantly seem to unfold on the ground from the perspective of an airplane. And I believe many of you share my enthusiasm.
By Joel Williams
Published: November, 2009
Whenever I fly, I try to get a window seat. Ever since I was a child, I have been fascinated with looking down at the geographical wonders that constantly seem to unfold on the ground from the perspective of an airplane. And I believe many of you share my enthusiasm.
I have flown in and out of Oakland and San Francisco countless times over the years, and the spectacular scenery of the Bay Area always provides one of the best aerial panoramas I’ve ever witnessed. It’s right up there with the Grand Canyon and Manhattan as far as slamming your nose up against a tiny window goes.
I do have one complaint, however: Travelling at several hundred miles an hour, the Bay Area leaves my view in just a few minutes. So, there is always a sense of urgency as I try to see as much as possible before it slips out of my view. And, because I don’t have any say in regards to the flight plan or the weather, I never know what I will be able to see, if anything.
There is a solution to this problem that I never would have expected: a Zeppelin ride! I have spent countless hours watching sporting events and daydreaming about how cool it would be to hang out in a blimp, but I didn’t know that I could actually ride in an airship. So, you can understand how excited I was when I recently spent an hour floating at around 1,000 feet over the Bay in an actual Zeppelin.
Airship Ventures is a company that provides the opportunity to take a leisurely trip in a Zeppelin NT over the San Francisco Bay. The NT or “New Technology” signifies the modifications made from the traditional Hindenburg style Zeppelins. Because I have already mentioned the “H” word, it should be made clear that modern-day Zeppelins use non-flammable helium. Even a lightning strike will not affect the flight characteristics of this airship, and Zeppelin NTs have been flying in Germany and Japan for the last 12 years with an unparalleled safety record.
Airship Ventures is the only passenger airship operation in the United States, and the company is based right in the Bay Area at Moffett Field in Mountain View. Their Zeppelin NT, Eureka, is the world’s largest airship. At 246 feet long, Eureka stretches 15 feet longer than a 747 and 50 feet longer that the largest blimp. In fact, it is one of only three Zeppelins operating worldwide. The trip that I took was a one-hour sunset Bay cruise from Oakland. Other options available include“flight-seeing tours” of Silicon Valley and Los Angeles and charters are available to Monterey and Wine Country.
We were told that we had to arrive an hour before the flight for a preflight briefing on the airship, and it quickly became clear why the preflight briefing was necessary. Boarding an airship like Eureka is quite different than the typical boarding process for an airplane. First, we all jumped into a van and met Eureka in the middle of an open field. Then, only two of us were allowed to board at a time, but only after an equal set of two of the current passengers disembarked, in order to maintain neutral buoyancy.
During the boarding process, the airship is kind of in limbo, not actually resting on the ground. Instead, the airship is actually being held to the ground, by the engines and by a tether, while people get off and on using a stairway that hangs temporarily from the doorway. This may sound a little strange, but, trust me, everything went very quickly and smoothly because we all knew what was going on and what to do, thanks to the briefing.
Once on board, I first noticed huge panoramic windows everywhere in the cabin providing a complete 360-degree view. One of the windows on each side opens for photography without any glare; there is also a 180-degree rear observation window and “love seat” that wraps around the entire aft of the cabin. There is even a window in the restroom! The cabin was slightly smaller than I imagined, but holds 12 people and a crew of two; everyone had plenty of room to move around once we got off the ground.
I took my seat and started to get out my camera and literally before I knew it, we were off the ground. Seriously—I looked out the window and we were hundreds of feet off the ground and I didn’t even know that we had taken off. That’s how smooth the takeoff was, and the cruise itself was even smoother. There was very little vibration and absolutely no turbulence during my wonderful trip.
The breathtaking views of the Bay were surreal as we cruised at a leisurely 35 knots over the Bay Bridge and along the San Francisco skyline. We then turned north at the Golden Gate Bridge and cruised over beautiful Angel Island as we headed back towards Oakland where once again we disembarked two by two, this time being replaced by ground crew members and lead weights for the trip back to Mountain View for the evening.
The very next morning, I flew to Chicago out of Oakland airport. As usual, I gazed out of the tiny window next to me as we departed, but my view was limited that day due to the flight path, so I never even had a chance to see the City or very much of the Bay. This time however, it didn’t really seem to matter and I didn’t do my usual face-on-window straining to see as much as possible in my limited viewing time. Somehow, after leisurely travelling over the Bay in a Zeppelin, I don’t think I’ll ever look at the Bay the same way from an airplane again.
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