Airship
 

Hi everybody, I didn't know where to post my question about Airship licence.
So I did in the training wannabe forum, I'd appreciate the mods help to tell me where this thread fit the best, and by that time I kindly ask the ppruners advice and information there: http://www.pprune.org/professional-p...p-licence.html

Hi

There is nowhere presently where you can add an LTA-Airship rating. To obtain such a rating, you would have to be employed by an operator. To my knowledge, only John and Martha King of King Schools 'fame' have done such rating without being employed.

To be honest, there are not very many airships flying, the cost of operating such a large aircraft with its 17 man ground crew would probably be prohibitive to most. The company I flew them for had a 'company pilots only' restriction, i.e. we couldn't give instruction to just anybody.

May I ask why you want to add the rating?

KAG, many, and I mean many years ago, I was offered a job with Goodyear as one of their Blimp/Airship pilots. I turned down the job when informed of the time on the road that was required, as I had just gotten married.

At that time, all blimp/airship pilot training was in house with Goodyear. Now I've been told, the training is either in house with the company or with airship manufacturer.

All Goodyear training is in house.

Still is then, not surprised, after all they have the most experience of operating those types of aircraft.

Thanks for your answers everyone.

Yes that's what I am told, all training is done in house.
I just wanted to know if some kind of training somewhere could be done on a private, personal basis.

Thanks again.

Con pilot, great opportunity you had! I have been told there are only 100 airship pilots in the whole world...

Yup, I had a few 'what if' moments after turning them down, especially after I got divorced from the wife that talked me out of going to work for Goodyear, because I would be gone away for such long periods of times during the year.

But then again, don't think I could have flown around the world in a airship as I did in corporate aircraft. :p

But what the hell, I did get to ride in it a couple of times and actually got to drive it around in the air once. I say 'drive' because it was more like driving something than flying something.

You would be surprised! They are operated all over the world. I travelled a lot with the airships. Singapore was my favourite basing. I've swapped it for corporate flying now though.

Oh, and it's like flying an oil tanker around the sky!