The difficulty with dirigibles is that you have to both fly them and sail them. The Americans and Brits back in the day tried to fly them through squall lines and ended up crashing all of their helium filled craft. The Germans, stuck filling theirs with hydrogen due to the US imposing an anti-Nazi embargo on the sale of helium, lost only the Hindenberg (possibly to sabotage, possibly to an electrical discharge). The Graf Zeppelin made many tran-Atlantic flights, including a record breaking one (with paying passengers) in which the captain used a hurricane to speed the journey, by sailing around the outer edge where the wind-speeds were safe. In terms of deaths per passenger mile, commercial zeppelin travel was safer than commercial airline travel.
I have a feeling the Airlander's slow-motion crash was a result of not sailing the craft properly (though why all of its gimbaled propellers seem to be aft is a mystery to me, a pair near the front could have been used to prevent the mishap).
