If you've ever spotted a blimp floating lazily across the sky at a sporting event, you've witnessed something surprisingly rare. As of the early 2020s, experts estimated there were only about 25 blimps in the entire world, and only half of them were actively flying. That's fewer blimps than Subway sandwich shops in a single city block.

But here's where it gets tricky: nobody actually knows the exact number. Dan Grossman, an airship expert, calls the question "inscrutable" because it depends on how you count. Are we talking about blimps currently inflated and cruising? Or do we include deflated ones sitting in storage that could theoretically fly again?

Why So Few?

Blimps once ruled the skies for advertising, passenger travel, and military reconnaissance. So what happened? Three words: slow, expensive, impractical.

They're incredibly slow compared to planes
They can only carry small loads
Operating costs are astronomical
Modern drones and helicopters do the job better
Weather conditions can ground them for days

The Airsign Airship Group operates 8 of the active blimps you might see today, including the Hood Blimp, DirecTV blimp, and MetLife blimp. Meanwhile, Goodyear—probably the name you think of when you hear "blimp"—operates just 3 in the United States, plus 1 in Europe.

Not Even Really Blimps Anymore

Here's a fun twist: Goodyear's modern "blimps" aren't technically blimps at all. They're semi-rigid airships called Zeppelin NTs, which have an internal framework. True blimps are just pressurized envelopes with no rigid structure—think of them as flying balloons with gondolas.

The company switched to these semi-rigid airships in 2017 because they're more stable and efficient, but they kept calling them blimps because, well, that's what people know. Marketing beats technical accuracy every time.

The Golden Age Is Gone

In the 1930s, blimps and their larger cousins (dirigibles and zeppelins) were the future of air travel. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937 certainly didn't help their reputation, but the real killer was progress. Airplanes got faster, cheaper, and more practical. Helicopters could hover and land anywhere. Drones could capture aerial footage without a massive envelope of helium.

Today's blimps survive in a tiny niche: aerial advertising and sports coverage. They're slow enough to hover over a football stadium, distinctive enough to grab attention, and just nostalgic enough to make people look up and point.

So the next time you see a blimp, appreciate it. You're looking at one of maybe a dozen flying wonders still working in the modern world—a technological dinosaur that somehow survived extinction, if barely.

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