A retro Goodyear blimp flew over the region this weekend. Here’s why it looked different — and how Philly became its first stop.

If you saw the Goodyear blimp flying over the region over the last few days and didn’t know why, the short answer is that it was providing live coverage of the PGA’s Truist Championship at the Philadelphia Cricket Club.

But there’s so much to the story, starting with why you might not have even recognized it.

The airship — a popular sight around sporting events all over the country — did not have its familiar blue-and-yellow striped markings as it flew over Montgomery County for three days of the tournament. Instead, the blimp donned a dark silver color, with the letters GOODYEAR and the iconic winged foot logo in all black right down the middle.

“I saw it just hovering around Northeast Philly over the weekend, I was wondering what it was doing around here, and then I saw it again when I was walking down Old York Road on Monday,” said Nadine Porter, an Abington Township resident who showed a reporter the balloon early Monday morning. “It’s not like every day there’s a blimp flying that low over Abington.”

The new look of the blimp is actually an old one — its original, in fact — as Goodyear returned the airship to its vintage model in commemoration of the blimp’s 100th anniversary celebration.

This weekend the blimp was stationed at Northeast Philadelphia Airport, and in addition to capturing the Truist Championship in Flourtown, it was also spotted at this weekend’s Catholic League track championships at La Salle University — the latter makes sense, given Goodyear’s affinity for road runners of all types.

There are several models of Goodyear blimps, but for the Truist, the company brought out Wingfoot One, the airship based out of Goodyear’s hometown of Akron, Ohio.

The story gets even more interesting as Philly, the Birthplace of a Nation, inadvertently became the first stop in Goodyear’s plan to honor its 100-year history.

“After bad weather prevented us from making it to last weekend’s Kentucky Derby, the Truist ended up being the first major sporting event covered by Wingfoot One in its vintage look,” Dan Smith, Goodyear’s senior airship communications specialist, told The Inquirer in an email. The blimp that flew over the Philly region “evokes the design of the first Goodyear Blimp, which took flight 100 years ago in 1925.”

The next stop for the vintage blimp is another golf event, according to Goodyear’s site: the PGA Championship, which begins this week in Charlotte, N.C., followed by its unmistakable presence at the Indianapolis 500 on May 24.

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While the company is honoring its blimp beginnings in 1925, its roots go back to the creation of its first balloon in 1912, and Goodyear began creating airships for the Navy in 1917. However, Pilgrim, which is the model that Wingfoot One is paying homage to this year, is what Goodyear recognizes as its first helium-filled airship, one that logged more than 95,000 miles before being replaced by the Puritan in 1928.

It’s possible this might not be the last time the blimp could be spotted in Philly this year, either. While there are no plans for a summer return according to Smith, the upcoming NFL and college football seasons are always under consideration for a flyover.

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Could Monday’s announcement of the Eagles opening the 2025 season at home against Dallas move the needle on that? We’re sure blimp-loving Eagles fans hope so.

“While our schedules often do change, we don’t currently have any summer events planned in Philadelphia,” Smith wrote. “The upcoming NFL and college football schedule releases will give us a better window into the fall, but we definitely expect those travels to take us to Philadelphia again this year.”