The world's largest airship, Zeppelin NT, was unloaded Wednesday at Japan's western Kobe port after arriving last week, the ship's purchaser Nippon Airship Corp announced. The 75-metre airship, manufactured by Germany's Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik, was preparing last June to take the same course across Siberia as the one taken by the Graf Zeppelin during a round-the-world flight in 1929, said a spokeswoman at Nippon Airship. But the company said the airship got no further than Helsinki in July, after failing to receive authorization to fly over Russian territory due to terrorist attacks in the country, including the September hostage crisis at a Russian school. Company officials then decided to have the ship sent by sea. Nippon Airship has obtained a business license for the new airship and plans to use it for commercial flights in Japan, including a publicity flight for the 2005 World Exposition Aichi, in Japan's central Aichi prefecture.
