The airship is disconnected from the mooring mast, the pilots communicate with the control tower and the engines gain power. Zeppelin moves almost silently and rises. In a moment we sail relatively quietly about three hundred meters above the ground and the Kbely military airport disappears below us, where the planes look like plastic models. Flight or rather sailing is difficult to compare. Deck sizes perhaps with a small airplane or a helicopter. However, the calm in the gondola is incomparable, as is the view created by the large windows.

Aboard the Zeppelin airship

Source: Youtube

The pilot gets up and turns to the passenger. It’s time for a comparison with the legendary Hindenburg and reassurance with a smile on our face that we really can’t burn: “Hindenburg was filled with flammable hydrogen, we use non-flammable helium, making Zeppelin one of the safest vehicles in the world,” Katharine recommends. She also explained to everyone that the airship has three engines and you can fly with one, and make an emergency landing without engines. “But then the pilots are nervous.”

Although there are a huge number of on-board instruments and controls, there must be a navigation screen between them, so controlling the air giant seems easy. That is, from the passenger’s point of view. The only thing the pilot controls the airship is a small joystick resembling a computer game controller.

Swing it, stick to the handles

“If the ship swings, you can hold on to these handrails at the top,” Katharine shows, sitting back behind the wheel and the pilots leading the airship over Karlštejn Castle. We head directly over the donjon, after a while we leave the castle behind and approach Beroun. Let there be something about speed along the highway. The cruising speed of the Zeppelin is about a hundred miles an hour, and indeed, the trucks are left behind and the cars are racing on the D5 faster than we are sailing in the sky.

We pass Točník and Žebrák, Zbiroh and Rokycany. The amazing spectacle is completed by clouds that are blown by the wind against us and are above and below the Zeppelin. Inversion makes shooting a little harder, but I still slide the camera out the window and take pictures of familiar places, like most passengers. We are heading to Pilsen and before we land we will experience one surprise. A man on a motor paragliding flies against us and when we pass in close proximity, he waves at us. “He’s crazy, but no one should break into us, we’re the biggest thing in heaven,” Katharine Board added with a smile again.

The airship can also brake, so that’s how a person feels before landing. We descend at the Letkov airport near Pilsen, we land on the area. Now it is clear to me why a strong rope hung from the bow of the airship all the way. He was caught on the ground by a man from the Zeppelin service team, who was holding the airship. At least that’s what it looks like. The instructions are clear. Only two passengers always disembark and two occur until the passengers are replaced. That the airship does not lighten and load too quickly. In retrospect, I learn that the new passengers were too light in total, so they had to board and leave another person from the organizing team.

The more than ten tons Zeppelin flew from Prague to Pilsen for two hours. The engines are snarling at aviation gasoline, which they stored in Pilsen for about one hundred and fifty liters.

The giant airship was leased by the technology company ZF, which in Pilsen supports gearboxes and electric drives for cars for companies such as Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, BMW or even Jaguar. It is interesting that the ZT gearboxes are also part of the mechanism driving the Zeppelin wading through the air ocean over the Czech Republic.