Friend of mine is obsessed with airships, so I've been required to learn a few things about airships.

The primary problem with airships is they're a stone cold bitch to land. Zamperini Field, where Goodyear lives, is a short drive from where I live... and Goodyear is generally inflated, tethered, and taking up about eight football fields rain or shine. That for a conveyance that will take like six passengers five hundred miles.

They're also really expensive to fly. Cousin of mine flies hot air balloons for a living. He gets about $180 a head for a tourist up-down 1-hr flight (landing is also a bitch - he can only fly about 4 months out of the year). Think he pays nearly $90 in propane for each passenger. Compare and contrast: Airship Tours tried to make a living in LA at $1000 a seat but lasted only a couple years.

Finally, we're running out of helium. Hot air blimps do exist (my cousin has one) but to do it right, you use helium. Even with helium you get spectacular crashes. Pretty sure the entire WWII dirigible fleet of the United States crashed. (I was close- the Los Angeles survived to be dismantled).

So you're left with "blimps" which don't haul nearly as much. The Navy used them in WWII for anti-submarine patrol - imagine five guys in a camper going out for two weeks and staring at the ocean - but even that meager use went away with the invention of jets.