Some Thoughtful Advantages of Airships that you might not have considered

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1. It is rare for the pilot to HAVE to land the airship Right Now, absent a personal emergency.

2. Both fixed and rotary wing airplanes must land quickly because that posture is the most vulnerable in terms of risk of stalling. Airships are much more akin to maritime vessels, in their ability to wait until conditions are optimum .

3. The interior of an airship --- essentially the working space of its crew --- is an ideal work environment as both noise and irritating vibration are very low. Think of the Zeppelin Hindenburg, which took advantage of this fact to place a piano on the passenger deck, as it showed, as nothing else could, how pleasant and possible that space was for both passengers and crew to function in. This smooth operation is also a factor in  lowering the stress on the airship's envelope, airframe, electronics, and mechanical machinery, extending its operating life significantly.  

4. A low, slow airplane is an indicator of danger --- an out of place machine in an unsafe mode of operation. A low, slow airship is safe - not in danger of an unwanted descent to earth.

5. An airplane must maintain certain minimum speeds, obtained only with certain minimum engine RPM, in order to maintain the forward speed of the craft above a sufficient speed (stall speed) to keep the aircraft flying. An airship can float safely indefinitely, although we must here exclude hybrids which must maintain some low forward speed to add its dynamic lift to its static lift, in sufficient amount to keep the airship aloft... unless, of course, it wishes to settle to earth.

6. Airship design is much more user-friendly when it comes to the use of electronic equipment on board. The envelope can be constructed of material that is essentially transparent to electro-magnetic radiation. This means that many remote-sensing devices can be mounted almost anywhere.

7. Externally mounted equipment is easy to position, as the craft is not as sensitive to the passage of air over the body at speed. It does not impede the flow by much if a particular sensor is not aerodynamically streamlined.

8. There is little actual damage to equipment due to maneuvers causing high G forces, as airships move in a stately manner .

9. An airplane requires a very long, extended, absolutely smooth-surfaced runway, with no ice, large impediments, or other hazards. An airship can be designed to settle smoothly on almost any surface, including ice and water, with almost no horizontal motion. This extends its operating geography enormously --- no need for Ice Road Trucks, dog sleds, clearing of rain forest areas, etc. It also speeds a return to normal operations following severe weather.

10. Maneuverability --- an airship in the hands of a trained pilot can rotate in place 360° using its swivel-mounted ducted fans without missing a beat.  

11. External quiet operation --- a real advantage in security operations, law enforcement, surveillance, tracking wild animals, operating above herds of domestic animals without spooking them, and so on. That makes for good neighbors, also, as anyone who lives near a major airport can testify, and maintains higher land values for neighborhoods.

We're beginning to think that if airship design and construction had truly gotten up to speed before airplanes (and without the bitter --- probably unearned --- taste of the Hindenburg conflagration), "conventional" airplanes would have been laughed off the planet.