Sunday, September 23, 2007

Zeppelin NT prototype can not be repaired

Continuing our coverage of the Zeppelin NT Prototype accident earlier this week. We want to share the first picture released by Zeppelin tonight along with a press release.

Here is the text of the pressrelease:
Experts arrived in Botswana

Airship irreparable

Friedrichshafen, September 22nd 2007 – The moored airship was considerably damaged by a sudden whirl wind on Thursday. Experts asses damage to be beyond repair. After disassembly first parts will be transported to Gaborone.

The damage makes it impossible to repair the airship. At the time of the occurrence the prototype was moored at the mast. The airship was not operated. The aft section hit ground first. The incident is classified as damage on ground by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Botswana.

The CAA Botswana has released the airship documentation without objection. The authorities have released the airship for transport to the hangar in Gaborone. After detail assessment the ZLT will decide on a possible use of part of the airship.
Well this means there is going to be one Zeppelin less around, but the question is how much longer was the prototype destined to fly and will the parts that are still intact be used for the fifth Zeppelin NT or for a resurrected prototype? Please also take a look at our previous Zeppelin articles and subscribe to the Blog for further updates. You can do this by subscribing to our RSS feed or via Email.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Relief that no greater injury to personnel occured.

airship industry will not grow beyond "novelty" until mooring masts and hangers are eliminated.

http://aerocrat.livejournal.com/ said...

thanks for the claming of my link. In last commet I refered to your blog.

fred said...

Please let me know about the Debswana airship. Will she resume work? One year later there should be news. We have some good footage in our documentary which needs to be altered if the Zeppelin is no longer used.
Best, Fred in Berlin

Andreas said...

Hello Fred,
as far as I know the Zeppelin has been taken apart and shipped to Germany. All sources seem to say that De Beers is not signing a new contract with Zeppelin to continue the Operation. After all there are only 3 Zeppelins in operation 1 in Germany, 1 in the US and 1 in Japan. So even if De Beers wanted there was no Zeppelin available right away. But I am sure ZLT is already planing on building number 5.

Regards Andreas

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Indian Pharmacy said...

ummmm :( this is a very bad news but I am sure somebody is gonna find the way to repair it