Milestone For New Zeppelin

(AP)  The makers of the revived zeppelin handed over their first airship to a commercial user Saturday, seeing off the sleek white craft with brass band serenades before it starts its leisurely voyage to Japan.

The granddaughter of the original airship's inventor, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, was on hand as Japan's Nippon Airship Corporation took delivery of the 247-foot ship, which is destined for sightseeing and advertising flights in Japan and a starring role at the 2005 world's fair in the city of Aichi.

The new craft designed by Germany's Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik - named Zeppelin NT for "New Technology" - is filled with helium rather than the intensely flammable hydrogen that fueled the earlier generation of airships.

"This is an important day in the history of Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik - the very first time that a Zeppelin NT has been sold," Zeppelin manager Bernd Straeter said as some 1,500 people gathered for Saturday's ceremony at the company's huge airship hangar in Friedrichshafen, on the shores of Lake Constance in southern Germany.

The original era of the zeppelin ended when the Hindenburg caught fire on landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937 - killing 35 of the 96 people on board and dashing the dream of the airship as a mode of transportation.

Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik starting building the new dirigibles, which are about one-third the length of the Hindenburg, in 1996, but the sale to the Nippon Airship Corporation - sealed in March - was its first commercial deal.

Straeter said Saturday the sale price was under $10.8 million, but did not elaborate.

On Sunday, the cigar-shaped craft - with "Germany in Japan" painted in large black letters on its side - is to take off on its journey to Japan, where it should arrive by mid-August.

The journey comes 75 years after the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin flew from Friedrichshafen to Tokyo.

There's room for 12 passengers and two crew members in the new ship's gondola, but it won't be taking passengers as it zigzags across Europe and on to Asia.

Three pilots and three technicians for the airship's new owner were given a three-month course of intensive training in Germany to prepare for the voyage.

Planned stops include Geneva, Paris, the Dutch port of Rotterdam, Munich, Berlin and Stockholm, where it will stop in mid-July before heading onward to Russia.

Currently named "Bodensee" - the German for Lake Constance - the ship eventually will be rechristened by its new owners, but the new name has yet to be chosen. The company plans to use the ship mostly for flights over the Tokyo area, said Hiroyuki Watanabe, Nippon Airship Corporation's president.

"This calm way of flying will suit Japan well," said Zeppelin's granddaughter, Elisabeth Veil.

Since 2001, the German company has been offering tours of Lake Constance, which straddles the Swiss-German border, with the three airships in its fleet.

The company is now developing a larger, 19-seater craft, Straeter said. He did not say when the bigger craft might be ready.