Talk About A Deflating Moment: Soccer Team’s Rented Blimp Crashes Into Houses

A Brazilian soccer team's blimp rental experience ended about as poorly as a blimp rental experience can with the the blimp crashing into some houses.

According to Daily Mail, São Paulo FC decided that they wanted to rent a blimp to fly over its match on Wednesday evening.

So, before it was showtime, the blimp did a test flight. Probably a good idea. I don't much about blimps or blimp rentals (although, I think we need an OutKick rental blimp someday. That'd be awesome) but I figure it never hurts to get some reps in.

However, things didn't go according to plan, and the moment the blimp careened into some houses was caught on camera.

There was only one reported injury and that was the blimp pilot, which considering it plowed into houses is pretty good.

That's a good look for blimps. It looked like there wasn't a whole lot of damage to the buildings. Sure, we've had some disasters with the Hindenberg and the R101 over the years (but those weren't blimps, those were rigid airships; there's a difference), but I think we've all been slipping on blimps for too long.

By the way, this brought to mind the 1977 Robert Shaw and Bruce Dern film Black Sunday, in which a Mossad agent (Shaw… yeah, Quint from Jaws) tries to stop a terrorist (Dern) from crashing into a blimp with a bomb onboard — and not just any blimp; the Goodyear blimp, which is like the king of blimps — into the Super Bowl.

It's a good movie. I love Robert Shaw.

Fortunately, the crash in Brazil appears to have been a complete accident, one that didn't appear to cause much damage or injury. Just a blimpless soccer match later in the evening (which is a bummer). 

Fire crews were reportedly waiting for the area's power grid to be shut off before they could begin removing the blimp.