Goodyear blimp crashes in Florida

Friday, June 17, 2005

A Goodyear blimp crashed at a Coral Springs, Florida industrial park on Thursday night, causing about 1,400 homes to lose power. The two people on board, pilot Daniel Lynn Thomas and passenger Charles Thomas, were not hurt, although they were trapped on board briefly while electrical crews cleared the area.

The blimp, named the "Stars and Stripes" is 192 feet long, 59.5 feet tall, and 50 feet wide. It took off from Goodyear's 32 acre blimp base at Pompano Beach Air Park, about 12 miles away, shortly before the crash. It is one of three Goodyear Blimps in the United States.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the cause of the crash, thought to be weather related. Goodyear company spokesman Jerry Jenkins, in a brief statement on Thursday, said, "We're grateful there were no injuries onboard or on the ground. Following an investigation, more information will be released."

"Stars and Stripes" was the oldest of the three operational Goodyear blimps and was best known for providing aerial coverage of NASCAR races.

Share this:

Sources

"Blimp Crashes in Fla.; Two Aboard Unhurt" — Associated Press, June 16, 2005
Jon Burstein, Akilah Johnson, Kevin Smith & Brian Haas. "Pilots identified in Goodyear blimp crash" — Sun-Sentinel, June 17, 2005
"The Goodyear blimps" — Goodyear,
"Pompano Beach Air Park" — City of Pomano Beach,
Evan S. Bin. "Blimp crash investigation begins, power mostly restored" — Miami Herald, June 17, 2005

The text of this article has been released into the public domain. In the event that this is not legally possible, this article may be used for any purpose, without any condition, unless such conditions are required by law. This applies worldwide. Copyright terms on images, however, may vary, so please check individual image pages prior to duplication.
Please note that this only applies to Wikinews content created prior to September 25, 2005. All content created after that date is released under a Creative Commons license which is mentioned at the bottom of each article. This is currently the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.