I managed to fnd a good excuse to include airships in
Scales. A parallel Earth, with an advanced, high-tech civilisation but a small and dispersed population, making other forms of long-distance transportation uneconomic. So the airships lower lifts to drop off and collect passengers anywhere on the planet, and only need a few bases for maintenance/refuelling.
Even the need for refuelling is eliminated by one class of airships - they use power beamed at them by satellites. I was a bit concerned about the passengers being cooked
so these are "tandem" airships, with a remotely controlled drone ship following some distance behind, connected by a power cable. The drone has a huge internal aerial to collect the beamed power and convert it to power the motors of both ships.