Germany looks to new Zeppelin era

Zeppelin casts a giant shadow over Lake Constance

By Peter Morgan in Berlin

The first passenger flight in a Zeppelin since the 1937 Hindenburg disaster has taken place in the skies over southern Germany.

It has taken much longer, of course, to overcome the memories of the flames which engulfed the world's last passenger Zeppelin.

The catastrophic crash of the German-built Hindenburg - the world's last passenger Zeppelin - killed 36 people.

Today's passengers pay around $270 to take a one-hour flight over picturesque Lake Constance in southern Germany.

But this could be just the start.

New century, new bid for a little luxury in the air

The company which built the new Zeppelin believes there is a commercial market for up to 80 of the aircraft, carrying tourists, photographers and scientists.

They could also be used as aerial advertising hoardings.

Safety first

At 75 metres long, the new Zeppelin is a mere minnow compared to the whale-like proportions of its great-great-grandfather, the 245-metre Hindenburg.

Whereas the Hindenburg carried about 100 passengers across the Atlantic, today's brief flights ferried just a dozen at a time into the skies.

Most critical of all, while the Hindenburg was filled with highly flammable hydrogen, the new Zeppelin is borne aloft by vast quantities of helium gas, which cannot burn.