List of Airship Accidents - 1980s

1980s

• 8 October 1980: The 170-foot EA-1 Jordache blimp, N5499A, leased by Jordache Enterprises Co., crashes at Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst, New Jersey on its maiden flight. With an 0815 hrs. launch, and a flightplan to Teterboro Airport and thence to a Manhattan photo shoot, the airship, weighed down with gold and burgundy paint, reaching 600 feet altitude, begins an unplanned right descending turn, with pilot James Buza, 40, making a "controlled descent" into a garbage dump, impaling the blimp on a pine tree, coming down a quarter mile from the site of the Hindenburg's 1937 demise. Buza, the only complement, is unhurt. According to the NTSB report, the cause was poor design. The pilot also had zero hours experience in the type.
• 1 July 1986: The experimental Helistat 97-34J crashes at Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst in Lakehurst, New Jersey after completing a test flight, killing one.