LV company launching blimps for advertising

Friday, Sept. 8, 2000 | 11:18 a.m.

Length: 143 feet

Width: 34.8 feet

Height: 43.8 feet

Speed: 65 knots (75 mph)

Seats: Five

Maximum altitude: 9,843 feet

Engines: Two 125-horsepower Continental IO-240B motors

Fuel tank: 76 gallons

Ad banner area: 2,085 square feet (on each side)

A Las Vegas company that plans to build a fleet of five advertising-bearing blimps has taken delivery of its first airship is flying it in Southern California.

Grant Murray, president of Airship USA, said he hopes to have a Las Vegas airship flying within a year and one each in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Phoenix within three years.

Murray, an aviation industry veteran and a former president of Scenic Airlines in Las Vegas, said the Southwest's reliable weather conditions and the high-tech design of his $2 million airships will allow the company to maximize the time it can fly advertising messages over highly populated areas.

In Los Angeles, the company is flying over beaches, concert venues and stadiums. Major conventions will be the target market in Las Vegas, Murray said.

The development of Airship USA's blimp, certified by the Federal Aviation Administration June 23, is a rags-to-riches story for the designer.

Igor Pasternak, a Russian immigrant with an idea for a digitally controlled dual ballonet airship, raised $7 million, learned to speak English and lost his sister and a co-worker in an accident in his bid to win FAA certification.

Murray recalled that he had heard about Pasternak, who was trying to sell Scenic on the idea of flying blimps for scenic tours over the Grand Canyon.

"When I got involved with the advertising idea, I tried to locate him and he was still here (in the United States), trying to find a buyer for the blimp," Murray said. "When I found him, we hooked up and his company built it."

Pasternak's Worldwide Aeros Corp., Chatsworth, Calif., developed the 143-foot, five-seat ship, called the Aeros 40B, with 20 employees and a shoestring budget.

Most blimps use cables to maneuver; Pasternak's ship uses a pneumatic system that can be operated with a joy stick, cutting pilot fatigue.

Tragedy struck the company in January when Pasternak's 32-year-old sister, Marina, and Levon Samamyam, an employee, died in a freak accident. They suffocated while repairing a ballonet -- an air balloon within the helium-filled blimp envelope. Six months later, Pasternak accepted his FAA certificate in the same San Bernardino, Calif., International Airport hangar where the accident occurred.

Certification occurred five years after Pasternak began his efforts in the United States. It was the seventh domestically built blimp to win FAA certification.

Now, Murray has begun the task of finding advertisers, looking for companies that want to take their messages to the air. Banners attached to the blimp's exterior turn the airship into a flying billboard. Interior lighting turns the craft into a glowing message in the night sky.

The cost for the message: about $13,000 a day on weekdays, $17,000 a day on weekends and $22,500 a day for holidays and special events, including conventions with more than 30,000 in attendance. In a typical lease, a ship will fly a message 120 hours a month for between $250,000 and $375,000.

Murray said advertising can be maximized by getting mentioned on sports telecasts in which cameras are mounted to the blimp. He's already made contact with the XFL, the new professional football league that will begin play in February with teams in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

"You can't not look at a blimp," Murray said of the advertising medium. "People love them when they see them because they're so graceful. They just float there."

Studies conducted by other blimp operators say in a typical city of between 1 million and 2 million people, 65 percent of the population recall the advertising presentation of the airship during a five-day flight period.

Murray doesn't intend to develop the ship as an air tour operation, although advertisers will get VIP flights as part of the ad package.

Airship USA's primary competitor in the Las Vegas market is the Lightship Group, which operates a blimp advertising various companies and vegas.com, the Internet site operated by the Greenspun family, which publishes the Las Vegas Sun and sister publications.

The 165-foot vegas.com airship is larger than Airship USA's blimp and has a gondola capable of flying nine passengers. The craft is based at the North Las Vegas Air Terminal and flies 50-minute air tours as well as advertising runs. That ship began operating in Las Vegas in October.