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| Fig. 1: The Hindenburg airship mooring in New Jersey, 1936. (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
The history of airships, or lighter-than-air vehicles, goes back to the mid-19th century when the French inventor Henri Gifford completed a successful test flight of his steam-powered airship. [1] This development continued through the end of the 19th century, but airships did not truly see their renaissance until the early to mid-20th century. During both world wars, several countries developed and deployed airships for scouting, escort, patrol, and bombing with mixed success. In the interwar period, Germany operated a passenger service on its Graf Zeppelin airship, which made 144 successful transatlantic crossings. In 1936, the Hindenburg successfully completed 10 flights carrying passengers between Germany and the United States (see Fig. 1). [2] The Hindenburg crash in 1937 marked the end of intercontinental passenger airship travel, and airship development as a whole dramatically slowed after the end of the Second World War.
Most airships that operate today are used for advertising or tourism; however, as of 2025, several companies have been working to develop a new generation of airships. In the United States, LTA Research, created by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has flown its Pathfinder 1 airship in test flights over San Francisco. Companies in other parts of the world, such as Flying Whales in France and Hybrid Air Vehicles in the United Kingdom, have also been developing airships. [3] Many of these companies aim to use airships for material transport, with a focus on delivering goods to hard-to-reach or remote areas.
Most modern airship companies do not publish their cost of operation, but historical data does exist to estimate costs. The Hindenburg reportedly cost $8.01 per statute mile and regularly carried roughly 8.5 tons of passengers, crew, mail, and freight. [2] Assuming a maximum carrying capacity of approximately 10 tons, the Hindenburg could carry freight at a cost per ton-mile of $0.812, or approximately ~$19 in 2025 dollars. In contrast, the average total operating cost per block hour for all major cargo air carriers in 2002 was $16,689 or approximately $30,607 2025 dollars. [4] This translates to a cost per ton-mile of ~$1 (2025 dollars) for a B767-300F with a payload of 59 tons and an average speed of 528 mph. Therefore, if you took the Hindenburg from 1936 and used it as a freight carrier today, it would be about 19 times more expensive than conventional air freight. Over the years, NASA has estimated the cost of using purpose-built airships for freight, with these estimates often falling in the range of approximately $2-3 per ton-mile in 2025 dollars. [2]
While a comparison between the largest airship ever flown, the Hindenburg, and airplanes for freight transport is an interesting exercise, it lacks important context. The Hindenburg was marketed as a luxury travel option; as such, its costs included extra crew and passenger amenities, and it was not optimized for pure freight transport. Moreover, it operated near the beginning of a new technology wave and therefore did not benefit from the same economies of scale as modern airplanes. On the other hand, the Hindenburg used hydrogen instead of helium as its lifting gas, which is significantly cheaper and generates more lift for the same volume. Given this context, it seems unlikely that airships will become a dominant form of freight transport without significant technological advances, though such advances are plausible, given that this analysis largely focused on airships developed in the 1930s. Even if airships remain more expensive than airplanes for freight transport, they could still play a critical role in delivering goods to regions without airport infrastructure.
© Brandon Ameglio. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute, and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] L. Laio, "A Review of Airship Structural Research and Development," Prog. Aerosp. Sci. 45, 93 (2009).
[2] "Feasibility Study of Modern Airships (Phase I) - Volume III 0 Historical Overview (Task I)," Goodyear Aerospace Corporation, U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Acministration, NASA CR-137692(3), August 1975.
[3] M. Koziol, "The Return of the Airship: LTA's Paathfinder 1 Will Begin Test Flights in 2023," IEEE 10006656, IEEE Spectrum 60, No. 1, 28 (2023).
[4] "Economic Values For FAA Investment and Regulator Decisions, a Guide," GRA Incorporated, October 2007.
