Why are airships not more popular? There is this question but I am hoping for more general answers to why airships are not more commonplace. 

The previous question does bring up the cost of production (mainly because of hi-tech fibers used in body construction) and the high capital costs for constructing hangars for these airships. 

However, civilization did operate fleets of these before and I'm just not certain why they have not 'come back' in a meaningful way. For instance, here are just a few uses that I can think of off-hand:


For tourism! Instead of a water-bourne cruise tourists can literally sail all over (I'd pay for that!)...
As the previous question implied, they can be used to carry cargo vast distances (although I am unsure if there is any real economic advantage here).


I know we use them in a small way for various things (military, sports, etc) but why are they not more commonplace?

I imagine the answer is mere economics but at the same time I feel there should be a market if for nothing else than tourism.



No one has really touched on the possibility of a cruise ship style airship. We have mentioned brief aerial tours but I'm talking about a semi-luxury week long trip in one of these things over very remote areas such as Alaska or the Siberia or even a desert... I realise there would not be room for all the luxuries of a cruise ship (pool, casino, etc) but I image about the same luxuries as a small yacht...

I imagine there are a lot of issues with long trips but can airships make unimproved 'port calls'? IE can they just set down for a few hours to let the passengers stretch their legs?
Airships are much more susceptible to bad weather. With an airplane you can pretty much count on it taking off on time and arriving within a couple of minutes of the scheduled time. This allows operators to employ their aircraft with a reliability which an airship will never be capable of. This means that the investment made into an airliner will lead to a predictable stream of revenue and (hopefully) profit, whereas the airship might need to wait several days until it can take off again, or headwind  might delay it by more than a day on a long trip. In this time, it will accumulate interest and fixed cost, but no additional revenue.

Scheduled air services were indeed first done with airships, but as soon as dependable aircraft were available, only a few niches like transatlantic travel were operated with airships. As soon as airplane performance covered those niches, airships became obsolete.

Today the most credible use of airships would be transportation of heavy equipment into remote areas. Tourism could be a second use, but the number of airships needed to cover this market is small. Airships do have some benefits:


no need to build roads or runways
carrying of outsize cargo is no problem
if the airship is big enough, payload can be immense
destinations can be anywhere, not only on a coast or a big river (where regular ships cover this niche more than adequately)


The few cases where the airship could be employed gainfully would not cover the expense of developing and building one. Development cost alone would be similar to the development cost of a new airliner!

But if we look back in history, even at a time when airships were available, big transportation tasks were done by aircraft. Papua has impenetrable jungles, and to transport dredging equipment and personnel to the Morobe goldfield from 1932 on, aircraft were used rather than airships. The huge dredges were dismantled for air transport and flown into Bulolo, where they were re-assembled and put to work. With a Zeppelin, less dismantling would have been needed, but just the complication of keeping the airship balanced when the load is released made this option less attractive.

For the history buffs: To transport very long items like the dredge shafts, a single-engined Junkers Ju-52 (Ju-52/1m) was used. It had a detachable rear fuselage with  automatic couplings for the control rods. Spherical collar screws ensured precise positioning of the two fuselage sections.