Airship Paris and Zeppelin France have formed a partnership to offer the first commercial sightseeing tours of Paris from a Zeppelin balloon.
The unique experience offers a chance to ride in a 12 seater airship, in which you can move about freely taking in the sights of Paris from above through the panoramic windows for a one hour journey.
The airship flies at an average cruising altitude of just 300m (about the height of the Eiffel Tower) and offers 4 routes – including the business area of La Defense and the Bois de Boulogne, over the Saint-Cloud Racecourse, the Chateaux of Versailles and Chantilly, up the meandering Seine and over the major monuments of Paris. It isn’t cheap (from €450.00 per person when we checked) but with many flights completely sold out this looks to be a very popular new addition to sightseeing tours of Paris.
The flights are available from August to 31st October and you can find details on the Airship Paris website.
Check out the Airship Paris video experience:
Key dates for Airship history:
1852: French aeronaut Henri Giffard (1825-1882) invents and pilots the first steam-powered airship.
1895: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838-1917) developed the idea and filed a patent – his name would become synonymous with the floating airship.
1899: Construction begins on the first airship hangar near Friedrichshafen at Lake Constance in Germany.
1900: First flight of a Zeppelin, the culmination of 25 years work.
1928: First commercial crossing. Frankfurt, Germany, to Lakehurst, US, with a total of 57 people on board a two and a half day flight.
1929: The Zeppelin loop around the world luxury with twenty passengers – it took 35 days.
1937: The Zeppelin “Hindenburg” caught fire on his arrival at the airport in Lakehurst near New York with 97 people aboard, 35 victims. This accident puts an end to commercial passenger airship in Germany.
1993: Founding of the company Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH (New Technology).
2001: Commercial passenger flights from Friedrichshafen, Germany.
2013: Airship Paris launches its first flight around Paris.
