The first thing you should know about the Goodyear blimp is that piloting one is nothing like piloting an airplane.
“Very, very, very different,” Adam Basaran said, when asked how the two compare. Basaran is the assistant chief pilot of Akron operations. A pilot for 29 years, he started flying the Goodyear blimp 13 years ago.
“It’s a lot of the knowledge base that you need to know to be a pilot, whether you fly helicopters, blimps, small planes, airlines. There’s a common core that you need to know about navigation, regulations, how an aircraft works,” Basaran said. “But then blimps are its own thing. We use helium for lift.”
That brings us to the second thing you should know about the Goodyear blimp. Riding in one feels much more like riding in a boat than it does like riding in an airplane.
“The same physics that would apply to a ship out on Lake Erie create the physics that allow the blimp to fly,” Basaran explained. “It’s what we call Archimedes’ principle, but instead of displacing water, we displace air to get that lift.”
Stay up to date: Read more about Akron’s first Blimp Day holiday coming June 6.
As it soared 1,500 feet above the ground, Wingfoot One, one of four Goodyear blimps, slowly ebbed and flowed through the air. Basaran looked at ease standing in the blimp answering questions as Gerry Hissem, chief pilot of Akron operations, manned the controls.
With 101 years of experience under its belt (or gondola, if you will), a quick, 30-minute ride over its homebase of Wingfoot Lake in Mogadore was old hat for the Goodyear blimp. Wingfoot One and its sisters — Wingfoot Two, based in Pompano Beach, Florida, Wingfoot Three from Carson City, California, and Europe blimp in Germany — have flown over baseball home openers, NBA playoff games, NASCAR races, Coachella, the Kentucky Derby and more.
Here in Northeast Ohio, blimp sightings are a bit more common, especially when the weather’s nice. Residents across Akron will have plenty of chances to see Wingfoot One and Two on Saturday when they fly over all of the city’s 24 neighborhoods in celebration of the first Blimp Day.
The Goodyear blimp celebrates more than a century in flight
The Goodyear blimp celebrated its 101st birthday on Wednesday with a bang. Dubbed BANGR at the HANGR, the invite-only event inside the Wingfoot Lake Airship Hangar featured music, themed mocktails (Sunset Over the Hangar, anyone?), countless Instagram-worthy photo backdrops and a surprising number of mascots. The guest list was a mix of social media influencers, brand representatives, plus sets from several Cleveland DJs and headliner Noizu.
Local favorites like Zippy, Flash and Chomp mingled with Cha Cha the Frog from Rainforest Café, Geoffrey the Giraffe from Toys “R” Us and an inflatable Flo from Progressive.
There was dancing, a “Happy Birthday” sing-along and even a cake. A smaller, remote-controlled version of the Goodyear blimp flew around the party, weaving in and around people.
But the main draw of the party was the chance to take a ride in Wingfoot One. Those who get to ride in the Goodyear blimp make up a small group. In a press release, Goodyear said .0006% of Americans ride in the blimp each year.
After a safety briefing, pilot Peter Kovach led a group of us to a van that would drive us out to meet the blimp. Wingfoot One can seat up to 12 people, but there were only five of us on the flight.
Kovach wasn’t flying the blimp that day. He’s a recent hire, and he still has to get his airship rating before he can fly passengers, he said.
A Medina native, Kovach studied aeronautics at Kent State University. Before coming to Goodyear, he worked as a flight instructor in Tampa. After his training is finished, Kovach will head back to Florida to join the crew of Wingfoot Two.
“My favorite part is meeting the people,” Kovach said of his new job. “Obviously, the flying’s cool, but I’m a people person at heart, and I knew if I went to the airlines I wouldn’t really get to enjoy that fact. I’ve only been here a few weeks, but I can tell it’s a tight-knit family.”
The 13th blimp flight of the day
A short ride later, we’re dropped off at our designated blimp pick-up spot. As Wingfoot One lowered to the ground, Zippy’s face peered out of a window. Once the blimp safely landed, the boarding process started. As two people got on the blimp, two more got off. Keeping the weight balanced is important when flying what is essentially a giant motorized balloon. (Zippy, the University of Akron’s mascot, was the last to disembark.)
“You guys are our 13th flight [of the day],” Basaran joked. “How do you feel about that?”
And then, we were off, flying at about 35 knots, or 40 miles per hour.
Standing on the ground and looking up at the blimp, it appeared to be almost motionless. But inside the blimp was a different story. It was constantly moving — a small dip here, a slightly bigger dip there — as it adjusted to the wind.
Before boarding the airship, Kovach explained the important role weather plays in piloting the blimp.
“If it’s too hot, we can’t go. If it’s too cold, we can’t,” he said. “We have to deal with this thing called super heat, and that’s telling us the difference between the air that is outside and then the helium actually inside of the ballasts inside the ship. So, dealing with that stuff and looking at that number, making sure we’re good to go is a huge part of the operation.”
On Wednesday, it was perfect blimp weather. Sunny, clear skies. Warm but not unbearably hot. (The temperature inside the blimp is always about the same as the temperature outside.) A window was opened to let in a cool breeze.
We passed over Wingfoot Lake, homes and farmland. In the distance, the Cleveland skyline peeked through. It felt like that moment when a plane has just taken off or is about to land and you can still see the world below you. Only this time, the flight was much more leisurely and enjoyable. Don’t expect blimps to take the place of commercial airplanes, though. The fastest the blimp can go is 70 miles per hour, which, Basaran said, “gets a little rough.”
Basaran has wanted to be a pilot since he was a kid. He had his first flying lesson at age 16. But piloting the Goodyear blimp was never on his radar. About five years into his job working as a commercial airline pilot out of Cleveland, a former classmate who worked with the Goodyear blimp staff invited him out for a visit.
Basaran still remembers that blimp ride. “We were flying the old blimp, the GZ-20, the slower, very loud, classic Goodyear blimp,” he said. “And I had the time of my life.”
As we disembarked, Basaran asked us to walk straight down the ladder and to his crewmate waving his hand in the distance. He politely asked that, for our safety, we not turn around and try to take any photos or pictures while disembarking.
Once we made it to the aforementioned crew member, our group headed to the van for our ride back. As we walked, I couldn’t resist a couple more peeks behind me to look at Wingfoot One before it went up for its final flight of the day.
And that’s the third thing you should know about the Goodyear blimp. No matter how many times you see it, getting a glimpse of that big, semi-rigid airship in the sky never gets old.
