Why not more drones then?

Sorta like how railroads figured out it was much simpler operationally to have fewer types of locomotives, and use multiples on larger trains, rather than create dinosaurs like the DDA40x (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_DDA40X) that were ONLY useful in narrow circumstances.

There are approx 53 million miles of energy infrastructure on the planet (a new report was published today).

Regular drones can't be used to inspect that much (too many drones required, too many pilots, too much aerial and ground risk - when regular drone fall they are lethal).

Drones are a commodity product where economies of scale have brought prices way down while capabilities have gone way up.

Airships won’t scale like that. You don’t have the benefit of tons of media companies buying airships to use as camera platforms.

Client should pay at least 3x times as much to get the same service from drones. Again, it's not scalable using drones that's why our clients keep using helicopter on 90% of their missions.

And in ten years when drones are 5 times as capable and cost half?