Friedrichshafen, 20 May 2025: Zeppelin Aviation & Industrial Service has established itself as an indispensable partner in the airship sector. The company makes a significant contribution to the development and manufacture of the Zeppelin airship's support structure.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Europa-Park, the brand-new Zeppelin has recently been flying its circles over the Lake Constance region. Zeppelin Aviation & Industrial Service manufactured the high-precision and particularly lightweight welded structure for this third airship of the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei. As a certified manufacturing and maintenance organisation for the aerospace industry, the company produced all the main welded assemblies - including the airship's entire support structure.

The support structure of the Zeppelin Neue Technologie (NT) consists of twelve segments with triangular carbon fibre frames and each segment in between consists of three aluminium longerons. With a total weight of around 1,100 kg, it combines exceptional lightness with high stability and forms the basis for the attachment of all main components such as the cabin, tail units and drives.

Zeppelin Aviation & Industrial Service's workshop welds and assembles the longerons from specially pressed aluminium profiles with the utmost precision. Each component undergoes comprehensive testing in order to fulfil the highest safety and quality requirements. The longerons are designed to withstand not only compressive and tensile stresses, but also considerable bending and torsional moments. The longitudinal and cross beams are connected to each other via precisely manufactured nodal points. The profiles that lie against the airship's envelope have flattened flanges on the outside, allowing the hull to fit neatly against the structure.

The longerons consist of custom-made profiles made from a high-tensile wrought aluminium alloy. Due to the special shape of the airship, each of the 39 longitudinal beams has an individual geometry. The front and rear beams are shorter and more curved than the centre sections, which are up to around 7 metres long. The diagonal tubes are precisely fitted and joined by manual tungsten inert gas welding (TIG).

Numerous specialised devices are used to maintain the required precision. The demanding TIG welding of the pipe nodes and the three-dimensional measurement of the structures are carried out by intensively trained aviation welders. They acquire their qualifications at the company's own welding school and the affiliated materials testing campus. After completion of all manufacturing and testing processes, Zeppelin Aviation & Industrial Service, as a certified EASA Part 21G manufacturing organisation, issues the documentation and the declaration of airworthiness (Form 1) - so the components can be delivered ready for assembly and installed directly in the airship.

By continuously developing its own production techniques, Aviation & Industrial Service ensures that the support structure of the Zeppelin NT meets the highest quality standards and functions reliably even under extreme conditions. This makes the company an indispensable partner in the aviation industry. Numerous processes were optimised in close cooperation with Zeppelin NT and Zeppelin Systems - such as the first article inspection of the welded assemblies using a 3D scanner, which digitally records the geometry of the components and compares it with the 3D model. In addition, a process for mechanical processing and measurement on the hybrid friction stir welding and milling system was developed in cooperation with Zeppelin Systems. This optimised production process reduces the number of transports of the sensitive longerons, improves the CO2 balance and thus minimises potential risks.