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UNITED PARCEL SERVICE
UPS Releases 3Q 2024 Earnings
SCREEN TAKES TV TO NEW HEIGHTS
ASSOCIATED PRESS - ORLANDO, Fla. -- Imagine a drive-in movie screen that floats 1,000 feet in the air -- and travels 15 mph. An Orlando-based blimp company called the Lightship Group effectively has made one, and it could be coming to a night sky near you. The company recently received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval for its new A-170 lightship, an enormous blimp that doesn't just say "Goodyear" or "Coca-Cola" on the side, but instead flashes their newest commercials, NFL highlights, movie trailers or whatever else a company wants to put on its 70-by-30-foot LED screen. "It totally rises above the clutter because this is the only one of its kind in the world," said Toby Page, Lightship group marketing director. "It's never been seen before, so it gets a huge amount of attention." The new blimp is the crossroads of technological advances in both balloon and LED technology, with stronger lift power, a more durable "envelope" (the part that fills with helium), and lighter, higher-quality electronics. Similar television screens previously were just too heavy. It first will be deployed overseas next month, though company officials, at their client's request, are keeping secret who paid $5 million for a yearlong campaign and where it's headed. The new airship has been exhibited publicly only once -- for attendees at the National Broadcasters Association in April in Las Vegas and then two nights over the casino-lined Las Vegas Strip. "It was an outrageous response," said Mickey Wittman, Lightship Group director of client services, adding that people in the crowd eagerly snapped pictures of the shipwith their cell-phone cameras. "We were afraid it would get lost in the neon." AMERICAN BLIMP LIGHTSHIP A-150 PASSES 10,000 FLIGHT HOURS It
took less than 7 years from its first flight in January, 1997, for
Lightship A-150-101 to accumulate 10,000 flight hours. At the
time it was flying over San Diego, CA displaying the logo of and
carrying VIPs for Sanyo, North America Corporation for whom it has been
operated since it went into commercial service in October, 1997.
This Lightship is the first of the 10-seat A-150 series of airships, announced by ABC in June, 1995. It had its first flight at MACS Tustin, CA on the 7th of January, 1997. Development and certification flights continued there through the late summer, and the FAA awarded then unrestricted Type Certificate on October 13 of that same year. At that time it had accumulated a total of 337 flight hours. Six lightships have exceeded 10,000 flight hours, and one of those passed 15,000 since being commissioned in November, 1992. Since November, 1989, when the A-60 Lightship -01 had its first flight, 17 additional A-60 series airships have been built, plus seven of the 10-seat A-150 Lightships. The fleet is now flying approximately 15,000 hours per year. During the past 14 years ABC airships have accomplished a number of”firsts”. First airship to fly in Mexico City and Denver, Colorado. First commercial blimp to fly an extended overwater mission - Florida to Puerto Rico. And, the first to achieve FAA IFR certification, which in the case of ABC airships is approved with a single pilot. Excluding the pre-WWII rigid airships, the ABC fleet has been first in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Poland, Slovakia, South Africa and, Turkey. The fleet has operated on every continent except Antarctica. |
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