Jim Maloney, the pilot in charge (essentially chief pilot) and a 19-year veteran of flying for Goodyear, was my instructor. Once the ship was aloft and away from the hangar, Maloney pointed out the throttles and flight instruments, which are much like those in a twin-engine airplane. Once aloft, an airship pilot spends very little time adjusting the throttles and a great deal of time catching up to the actions of Mother Nature. After giving a brief description of blimp basics, Maloney explained how Goodyear does most of its training: on the job. He then got up and casually walked behind the pilot seat while I moved over to take the controls.
From the moment I sat down I realized why all the Goodyear employees I'd met talked of the airship, not the blimp. It truly was a ship flying through the air. I quickly realized that the ship's huge sail area reacted to the slightest movement of the surrounding air. We were flying on a cold but sunny day, and thermals picked up just the nose, just the tail, or the whole ship at once, making flying a process of constantly adjusting to compensate for the changing environment. In a conventional aircraft, a pilot can set up the power and trim and, although constantly monitoring the situation, can relax a bit and even have a snack on a cross-country flight. An airship pilot can never relax but must continuously and actively fly the ship.
One of the first things a new pilot notices is that there is no yoke or stick. Instead, directly to the right of the pilot is an enormous wooden wheel, which the pilot rolls forward or backward like a trim wheel to activate the elevators. This system allows the pilot to control the barn-door-sized elevators without becoming exhausted.
Just about all the blimp's controls are in proportion with its huge scale. The rudder pedals are giant, and the pilot must keep them moving constantly. When the wind moved the airship a little to the left, it took nearly full right rudder to compensate. But the rudder did its job well, and I had to be careful not to overcompensate, sending the airship skidding to the right.
Holding altitude and heading is no easy feat for new airship pilots. As Maloney explained, to fly an airship you have to be able to "pat your tummy and rub your head, and Mother Nature gets to yell 'switch.'" And it seems Mother Nature takes a perverse delight in yelling "switch" on first-time pilots. The airship was so big that as we flew into a thermal, the nose would lift, but by the time I had corrected for it, the tail was rising as it traveled through the thermal, sending us porpoising through the air. Maloney assured me that airship pilots eventually develop the same seat-of-the-pants feel for flying that airplane pilots do, making it easier to anticipate and correct for the vagaries of wind.
Even after a pilot has mastered the elevator and rudder dance, there is a great deal more to learn about flying an airship, including factors that simply don't come up in airplanes and helicopters. Because helium expands and contracts as the airship rises and descends, the pilot must add air to the ballonets - essentially air bags inside the forward and aft portions of the envelope - to control the ascent and descent much the way SCUBA divers vary the air in their buoyancy vests as they descend and rise in the water. Getting these adjustments right is especially important when it's time to land. Airships don't flare; in fact, a flat landing is ideal. Too much or too little air in either the forward or aft ballonets and the blimp could end up with a smashed tail or damaged nose.
While new Goodyear airship pilots do most training on the job, they do dedicate some flights to training only, in both cases under the supervision of Goodyear's instructor pilots. New pilots follow the FAA syllabus for lighter-than-air (LTA) aircraft and supplement that with the company's own syllabus.
Many airship training maneuvers are similar to those student pilots learn in an airplane, including figure eights and turns around a point. If you think about it, covering a football game is essentially making one continuous left turn. And learning to handle strong wind is perhaps even more important than in a conventional aircraft. If you don't maneuver properly on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, you are likely to end up way downwind. Of course, there are no steep power turns, and no matter how hard you try, you just can't stall a blimp. But you can try. We pitched the blimp up to its maximum angle of 30 degrees and Maloney cut the power. We just floated there in almost unreal silence. The airship is an incredibly stable vehicle - a bonus in its role as a television platform.
New pilots not only learn how to fly, they also learn how to handle the airship on the ground so that they can play their part when the blimp travels. Each airship flies about 1,800 hours per year, and the crews are on the road up to six months out of the year, generally from May through October. Traveling pilots can expect to fly six days per week, including some three hours of public relations flying per day per pilot and eight hours of cross-country flying per day when moving the blimp from place to place. Because airship pilots must constantly work the controls, they switch about every hour on long cross-country flights. The airship requires a crew of 21 or 22 people to accompany it on the road. A bus, a passenger van, and a tractor-trailer rig rendezvous with the airship at each destination. The tractor-trailer serves as a mobile maintenance facility and holds the portable mast to which the blimp is secured when it's not in the hangar. The airship can never be left alone, so someone stays with it day and night to make sure it is secure. Every crewmember performs multiple tasks to make sure the ship travels safely and on schedule.
Goodyear has a 90-year history in lighter-than-air aviation. The company opened its aeronautics department in
1910 and built its first balloon in 1912. In 1917, it began building airships for the U.S. Navy and had built some 347 airships by 1995. One pilot explained that the sacrifices of living out of a suitcase for six months of the year are worth it if you really love to fly airships. After just one lesson in the Spirit of Goodyear, I understood what he meant. The unique challenge of flying an airship could easily become addictive.
For more information about the Spirit of Goodyear and the rest of the fleet, visit the Web site (www.goodyear.com ).
So You Want To Fly A Blimp
Qualifications for the job of piloting a blimp are fairly simple. Goodyear requires a commercial pilot certificate with instrument with multiengine ratings and prefers a college degree. In fact, many of the company's pilots have masters and even doctoral degrees. Goodyear pilots also need to be friendly and outgoing since much of their job is public relations work in addition to flying. To earn an LTA rating, the FAA requires a minimum of 200 hours of airship pilot training. Since Goodyear trains its pilots on the job, candidates for the LTA generally have acquired 500 to 600 hours in the blimp over the course of six months.
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