Eureka! Fly in the world’s largest Zeppelin

Zeppelin flies over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Nicholas A. Veronico photo.

The world’s largest Zeppelin, Airship Ventures’ Eureka, is offering flightseeing tours Sept. 3-8, 2009 over Los Angeles and Orange counties. Among the passengers on board the Sept. 3 flight from the Long Beach Airport will be Edson, a 29-year-old Hollywood resident who is battling bone cancer. The trip is sponsored by Santa Barbara’s Dream Foundation.

Eureka will also be hosting the first-ever live Internet radio broadcast aboard an airship on Sept. 3. Two wsRadio Network stations will broadcast live via satellite from the airship. Shutterbug Magazine Radio will be aboard from 5-6 AM and a special guest edition of The Washington Times Radio will air from 6-7 AM.

Based in San Francisco, this is Eureka’s third Southern California excursion in 2009. One and two-hour flightseeing tours and private charters will be offered over the long Labor Day weekend. Tour routes include numerous landmarks such as the historic Queen Mary, Long Beach Harbor, the Sunset Strip and the Pacific Coast from Huntington Beach to Santa Monica.

A two-hour Hollywood Studio Tour flight will soar over downtown Los Angeles, Dodger Statium, Beverly Hills and Bel Air and a rare view of the back lots of all the major studios (Disney, Dreamworks, NBC, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Brothers). There will also be a close-up fly-by of the iconic Hollywood sign. The two-hour Coastline Flight follows the coastline south into Orange County with vistas from Long Beach to San Clemente. Eureka will also conduct sunset tours.

There will also be an opportunity to be onboard the Zeppelin during the airship’s transit flights between Long Beach and San Francisco. The eight-hour journeys follow Highway 1 on Sept. 2 (southbound) and Sept. 9 (northbound), as the Eureka travels to and from Long Beach and her home base at Moffett Field near San Francisco.

One-hour flights are $495 per person, two-hour flights are $990. Taxes nor included. The one-way transit flights are $1,500.

At 246 feet in length, Airship Ventures’ Eureka is the world’s largest airship, 15 feet longer than a Boeing 747 and dwarfing the largest blimp by more than 50 feet. One of only three Zeppelins currently operating in the world, Eureka is North America’s only passenger airship, offering guests 360-degree views on flightseeing tours above the San Francisco Bay, Silicon Valley, Monterey and Los Angeles.