The Goodyear Spirit of America blimp made its last departure from the Carson air field before its retirement. Electronics technician Carlos Preza hops out of the cockpit while on pressure watch, which is done every hour around the clock.
The Spirit of America, Carson’s elderly Goodyear blimp that captured the attention and imagination of Southern California residents for more than a decade, was put to rest Monday.
More than 1,500 visitors paid their respects at its Main Street base near the 405 Freeway over the weekend before its final afternoon flight to an old U.S. Navy blimp base in Tustin, where it will be stripped for parts and deflated.
• Video: The Spirit of America in flight
“It’s been good to us and we’ve been good to it,” said blimp pilot Matthew St. John. “It’s sad to see it go, but it’s exciting to know Goodyear has a plan for the future. The public loves it.”
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A newer blimp from Florida, the Spirit of Innovation, will soon fill the void until the next generation of helium-filled airships — the ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik — is built. That German-designed dirigible will be 50 feet longer and 50 percent faster than its ancestor, and is expected to begin service at the Carson base in September 2016.
The Spirit of America was one of three U.S. blimps owned and operated by the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., which deployed it largely for marketing purposes at the Rose Parade, Academy Awards, Dodgers games and other high-profile events. But blimp rides in a small gondola beneath the 200-foot-long, blue-and-yellow envelope also are donated to charities and given as rewards to large-scale customers. Goodyear’s Pompano Beach, Fla., base will be the first to debut the new model, followed by Carson and then Akron, Ohio.
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• Photos: The Spirit of America’s final flight
But, as blimp admirers gathered at the Carson base Monday to watch the final takeoff, the focus was on the past rather than the sleeker, more dextrous machine that is to come.
Jackie Miller, 90, said she came from Newport Beach because she and her now-deceased husband always kept an eye out for the blimp and loved to watch it fly past their home.
“When we didn’t see it flying by, we’d wonder where it was,” Miller said. “This has been with us since we were young. It’s good history. My husband loved the blimp. I knew he was pushing me to come here.”
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The Spirit of America was christened on Sept. 5, 2002, as one in a long line of similar models from Goodyear that first debuted in 1925. Carson has been a home to blimps, which have life spans of about a dozen years, since 1967.
In its lifetime, the Spirit of America took 8,005 flights, carried 30,280 passengers and spent 13,436 hours in the air.
Its gondola will be donated to the Planes of Fame flight museum at Chino Airport, and about 1,500 pounds of the envelope will be given to Trash for Teaching, a Gardena nonprofit that repurposes leftover industrial and manufacturing items.
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The ship’s final major work flight was to Seattle for the U.S. Open golf championship, where it hovered in the air while one of the youngest-ever national champions, Jordan Spieth, captured the title.
St. John called it a “nice farewell trip” because the crew flew over the redwoods, mountains and “absolutely gorgeous” coast. He was hired to man the blimp nine years ago because of his unique experience as both a sailor and a commercial airline pilot.
“It’s a different way of flying,” St. John said. “Flying it is very similar to operating a submarine. It’s almost like it defies physics because it’s 13,000 pounds of mass yet it floats lighter than air. That’s what really sparks the curiosity.
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“I’ve had kids come up and hug my leg after a flight. People are fascinated by it.”
Spirit of America by the numbers
13: Years in service in Carson
8,005: Total flights
13,436: Hours in the air
30,280: Total passengers