Like swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano — except with a longer interval (73 years in this case) — the zeppelins are returning to California.

Operating out of Moffett Field, near Mountain View at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, Airship Ventures has announced that it has inked a deal with Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH of Germany (the successor of the same firm who made the Hindenburg and the zeppelins that bombed London in World War I) to acquire a modern, 12-passenger zeppelin.

The $8 million airship will be sent to California in September, where it will be used mostly for sightseeing excursions. Being much smaller than the passenger zeppelins of the 1920s and 1930s, it will have to cross the Atlantic on the deck of a ship.

The airship will be the fourth of the Zeppelin NT line produced by the German firm, which differs considerably from the aerial giants that roamed the skies before they were retired after the fiery crash of the Hindenburg in 1937.