If lifting technology of airships outstrips that of airplanes, (say the airfoil design of the wing was flawed and the Wright brothers abandoned or let lay fallow their airplane design)...
Lots of people were competing to design flying machines. Some of them even had the backing of national governments. France was spending good money on their project. If the Wrights didn't do it someone else would. Most promising alternate would be Alberto Santos-Dumont of Brazil. In fact some say he did invent the first proper manned flying machine (his didn't need a catapult to take-off), but the Wrights simply had better publicity sense.
I'm not saying airships couldn't be more popular. But they were doomed to be a short lived dead end. At best they could make a bigger niche for themselves. Airplanes are just fundamentally a simpler and better solution.
The only way for airships to be have a real chance is for some critical technologies to mature earlier.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/12/10/brazil.santosdumont.reut/index.html