Biggest issue with them is they can hardly carry any weight. That's why the proportions of them are always so weird, with a huge body and a tiny cabin in comparison. They are also slow and very easily taken down. So in reality they are pretty much bad at everything. Cool as hell though.
If im not mistaken newer versions are a lot more effective and if implemented correctly for deliveries could massively save on carbon emissions. With the added bonus of making our skies look cool as fuck. I remember reading something about it awhile ago but like all things it was on the internet and i dont remember details so who knows how much was true to begin with let alone how much i remember correctly.
In Germany we had a company a few years ago, that had planned to build cargo airships to replace heavyweight transports on streets. The idea was to use it for freights of up to 160 tons of weight.
Admittedly, it was a financial disaster and the company went bankrupt after a few years. But the limited weight capacity wasn't the problem.
Crimson Skies is a tabletop and a video game media franchise created by Jordan Weisman and Dave McCoy, first released as a board game in 1998 and then as a PC game in 2000.
The series is set within an alternate history of the 1930s invented by Weisman and McCoy. Within this divergent timeline, the United States has collapsed, and air travel has become the most popular mode of transportation in North America; as a result, air pirates thrive in the world of Crimson Skies. In describing the concept of Crimson Skies, Jordan Weisman stated he wanted to "take the idea of 16th century Caribbean piracy and translate into a 1930s American setting".[3]