How was traveling via blimp? Was it luxurious and were there windows, where did the living quarters exist? Were people contained within the balloon in some sort of air-filled bubble? Did they have kitchens aboard?

by JamesTheJerk
Bigglesworth_

Oddly enough someone recently asked about the cost of flying by zeppelin, so to start with a repost of my answer from that:

There were very few scheduled airship services; according to Zeppelin: Rigid Airships 1893-1940 by Peter Brooks they were limited to a service between Friedrichshafen and Berlin in 1919, Friedrichshafen to South American from 1932-37, and Frankfurt-am-Main to Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1936-37. A one-way fare from Friedrichshafen to Berlin was 575 marks (£40.50 in "today's money" by Brooks' calculation, though the book was published in 1992).

The Airline Timetable Images website has timetables for the latter services; the fare for Friedrichshafen to Rio de Janeiro was 1400 marks in 1934 and 1935. The Frankfurt to Lakehurst fare was from $400 to $750 one way, depending on date and cabin occupancy.

Other than that there was private chartering; Brooks mentions Baron Rothschild chartering LZ6A in September 1910 for 2,000 marks for two hours (£1,700 "today", i.e. 1992), but the only sustained services were the transatlantic flights of the mid-1930s.

Just a small thing about terminology: "airship" is a generic term for a propelled lighter-than-air aircraft. A "blimp" is an airship that does not have a rigid frame to preserve its shape, the pressure of gas does that; the Goodyear blimps are, as the name suggests, blimps. A "zeppelin" is, technically, a rigid frame airship manufactured by the Zeppelin company but has become more generically any rigid frame airship. All the above passenger airships were Zeppelins.

The brief Friedrichshafen to Berlin service in 1919 used Zeppelin LZ-120 Bodensee before it was handed over to the Italian Navy. Passengers were carried in a car or gondola quite similar to a railway carriage for the 4-9 hour journey; see DELAG: The World’s First Airline on Airships.net for more details including a couple of photographs of the cabin of Bodensee and other early passenger Zeppelins. It had "a small kitchen for light meals", not too dissimilar to a long train journey.

The transatlantic voyages, on the other hand, lasted several days and therefore needed rather more comfortable accommodation. LZ-127 Graf Zeppelin had cabins for 20 passengers and a lounge/dining room in a gondola; LZ-129 Hindenburg could carry 50-70 passengers in accommodation built into the hull of the airship with rather more facilities - a large dining room, lounge (where passengers could enjoy music played on a grand piano), promenade areas, bar, and a smoking room (on a hydrogen airship!) Airships.net once again is an excellent resource with many photographs of both Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg.