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This scenario was inspired by An Extremely Reluctant Fuhrer TL by Johnboy over in the ASB forum. In that TL, one thing that caught my attention was a small mention that passenger airships remain in service up until 1960. This is in spite of (a) the Hindenburg disaster occurring (that TL's PoD was in 1939), and (b) WW2 still occurring (albeit, only the Eastern Front and the Pacific War), so airplane technological progress is still accelerated by the war. Within the TL, the main reason given for why zeppelins survived that long is because they boast long-range capabilities that airplanes simply couldn't match until the 60's. So, while Transatlantic routes like Germany to New York were served by airplanes, zeppelins were used on routes to places like Cape Town and Australia.

The question I submit to you all is this: in an alternate timeline where neither of these two events occur, how long could zeppelins hypothetically remain in service? Without WW2, would aircraft tech still advance as quickly as in OTL? What other innovations could be adopted by zeppelins to still keep them competitive against airplanes and ocean-liners? Was a Hindenburg-like disaster inevitable, or was it a tragic fluke? Could similar disasters occur in this TL? What state would the global economy have to be in to make expensive zeppelin operations commercially viable? Could we be seeing passenger airships remain in operation well into the 60's? And what will eventually kill the zeppelin: a single highly publicized disaster, a global economic downturn, a new technological innovation, or some combination of the above?
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