“The original slow-flight influencer, airborne since 1925.”
Before the Super Bowl flyover, there was the Pilgrim. Built in 1925, Goodyear’s first commercial non-rigid airship was also the first to fly on helium and tuck its passenger gondola flush against the envelope with internal cables—no dangled bumpers. The Smithsonian recognized it as a milestone in aviation progress. By 1930, the Defender carried the world’s first lighted aerial sign, a neon novelty called the Neon-O-Gram. Meanwhile, Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation was building the Navy’s rigid giants Akron and Macon in the world’s largest hangar. Today’s Wingfoot fleet is the longest continuously operating airship program on Earth, still floating above ballparks and golf courses, a century of lighter-than-air lineage riding on a bag of gas.
The Pilgrim's helium and flush-cabled gondola, not the Navy's rigid giants in the same company's hangar, are what still fly as the Wingfoot fleet. The airship you can inspect and keep current is the one that lasts a century.