The slowest aircraft in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 might be its most interesting new release. The Goodyear Blimp — arguably the most recognizable airship on the planet — is now flyable in the sim, Microsoft announced on Xbox Wire on July 22. It is the aircraft’s first appearance in the franchise, and the timing is deliberate: it lands just weeks after World Update 22 filled the sim’s United States with meticulously rebuilt national parks, giving the blimp exactly the kind of scenery a 73-mph cruiser was made for.
A Zeppelin in blimp’s clothing
The in-sim aircraft is not a generic balloon with a logo. It reproduces the modern Goodyear fleet, which since 2014 has been based on Germany’s Zeppelin New Technology (NT) design — technically a semi-rigid airship rather than a true blimp, because it hangs its envelope on an internal carbon-fiber-and-aluminum framework. The real aircraft, documented on Goodyear’s own fleet pages, stretches roughly 246 feet, carries up to 14 people in its configurable gondola, and pairs fly-by-wire controls with three vectored-thrust engines. It can stay aloft for more than 22 hours, has a 600-mile range, and tops out at 73 mph.
Goodyear chief pilot Adam Basaran, who reviewed the sim version for Xbox Wire, says the reproduction goes deep enough to include “the LED sign computer keyboard in the left side pilot storage cubby” of Wingfoot Two — the kind of detail only someone who flies the real aircraft would ever check.
Image: Xbox Wire / Microsoft
Flying it is a genuinely different skill
Simmers raised on Cessnas and helicopters should expect a mindset shift. Basaran describes an aircraft with close to 20,000 pounds of mass moved by just 600 total horsepower, which means every control and throttle input arrives with a lag. His advice: “Think of flying the blimp like you would captaining a large ship on the ocean.” Wind management matters far more than in faster aircraft, too — at blimp speeds, finding an altitude with a tailwind is the difference between making progress and hovering in place.
That patience has a payoff the sim can only hint at. Over a college football stadium, Basaran says, the real blimp is quiet enough that the crew can hear the marching band at halftime and the crowd roaring after a score.
For a first flight, he suggests recreating the real fleet’s home routine: depart Wingfoot Lake (4OH6) in Mogadore, Ohio, and make the short hop to the historic Akron Air Dock at Akron Fulton Airport — the site where Goodyear’s airship story began.
Why the timing matters
The release rides on World Update 22: United States National Parks, which shipped free on July 2 and rebuilds landmarks across Death Valley, Olympic, and Acadia National Parks plus Mount Hood National Forest, pegged to the United States’ 250th birthday celebrations. Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jorg Neumann calls the pairing intentional, pitching the blimp as “the perfect aircraft to take in the stunning and varied landscapes of America as well as 36 of its National Parks from the skies.”
There is also a quietly clever brand-history loop here. Goodyear got into lighter-than-air flight because the rubberized fabric it developed for tires in the 1900s turned out to be ideal for balloons, which became military airships, which became the advertising icon circling stadiums today. Putting that aircraft into a flight simulator closes the circle: the blimp has always been a machine built to be seen, and now anyone can sit in the pilot’s seat instead of squinting up at it.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is available on Xbox Series X|S, PC, Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation 5, and Steam, is included with Xbox Game Pass, and supports Xbox Play Anywhere — so the blimp’s unhurried sightseeing loops are a couch, cloud, or desktop activity as you prefer.
