Technology, yes, but Hydrogen has almost nothing to do with it. The Hindenburg was only one of many great airship disasters of the early 20th century, and sever

Technology, yes, but Hydrogen has almost nothing to do with it. The Hindenburg was only one of many great airship disasters of the early 20th century, and several of those ships were filled with Helium. Airships have two great weaknesses. One is that they are just really expensive to build and operate. Today that's a little less of a problem because of the availability of financing and improvements in technology reducing the labor and cost of materials for constructing an airship. The other major weakness is the double combo of airships being highly susceptible to weather and also fairly fragile. An airplane can take off and land in a thunderstorm, travel at 600 mph across the country, and then turn around at the destination very rapidly and keep going. This is why airplanes, particularly jet aircraft, won the air travel competition, they have a much higher duty cycle and are much more reliable than many alternatives. Technology has greatly improved our ability to spot and predict adverse weather and has also improved construction materials, designs, control systems, etc. all of which can make operating airships much more predictable and safer. But they will never be competitive with airplanes for travel, they serve a niche. Also, in regards to safety it's just blatantly untrue. Airships crashed, a lot, airplanes crash almost never (it's so rare that any time it does happen it's newsworthy, often on a global scale), any other hypothetical advantage of airships is mooted by that basic fact.