I get that the airship was already on its way out by the time airliners became viable for transatlantic travel, but considering that airships were more fuel efficient, and airplanes were very fast, was it just a mater of no one thinking of it, or was there a problem with this concept that made such a design inefficient
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They are kind of mutually exclusive. Airships “float” by displacing heavy air with something lighter. That takes up a lot of space. Big things create a lot of drag when you move them through the air. So an airship uses very little energy to create lift, but needs a lot of energy if it wants to move forward quickly through the airmass.
Airplanes use wings to create lift. To lift heavy things, you need big wings, and/or a lot of airspeed. Double the speed, quadruple the drag and the thrust needed to move.
I don’t think there is a way to really combine the two. An airship wouldn’t hold together at airplane speeds, would require a ton of power/fuel, and would need huge wings to have any real effect on it’ performance.
Think about trying to run fast holding 10 mylar balloons. They lift things well…but they take a ton of energy to make them go fast.
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