Katharine Board, known as Kate Board, is an English pilot, the world's first female qualified

Zeppelin A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp. 155� ...

pilot. She started to learn to fly when her father gave her five hours of flying lessons for her 19th birthday, and after this worked at her local flying club, being paid in flying time. Her first flying job was with Virgin Balloon Flights, and Virgin subsequently offered her a job flying

blimp A non-rigid airship, commonly called a blimp (Help:IPA/English, /blɪmp/), is an airship (dirigible) without an internal structural framework or a keel. Unlike semi-rigid airship, semi-rigid and rigid airships (e.g. Zeppelins), blimps rely on th ...

s, for which she trained at

Kissimmee, Florida Kissimmee ( ) is the largest city and county seat of Osceola County, Florida, Osceola County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 79,226. It is a principal city of the Greater Orlando, O ...

, in the United States. In 2005 she was flying an American Blimp Corporation A-60+ for Lightship Group, and was one of only about 100 active

airship An airship, dirigible balloon or dirigible is a type of aerostat (lighter-than-air) aircraft that can navigate through the air flying powered aircraft, under its own power. Aerostats use buoyancy from a lifting gas that is less dense than the ...

pilots in the United States. She had logged about 3,000 flying hours, of which only 250 hours was in planes, the remainder in airships. By 2011 Board was working for Airship Ventures who offered "Zeppelin tours of San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles and the Monterey Coast" in their craft ''Eureka'', and she was described as the only female

pilot in the world. She had logged more than 5,000 flight hours and was certified by the CAA, LBA and FAA as a commercial airship pilot. By 2012 she had left Airship Ventures to fly a Zeppelin based at

Friedrichshafen Friedrichshafen ( or ; Low Alemannic: ''Hafe'' or ''Fridrichshafe'') is a city on the northern shoreline of Lake Constance (the ''Bodensee'') in Southern Germany, near the borders of both Switzerland and Austria. It is the district capital (''K ...

, Germany, the only other Zeppelin still flying. A second woman, American Andrea Deyling, qualified as a Zeppelin pilot that year.

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