Globally ditching an entire class of aircraft, overnight, because of one crash, that more than half of the people on board survived? God, just that sentence alone gets the noggin joggin', and yet I never drew the oil oligarch connection.

I don't think that's actually accurate. I watched something about the US developing airships to use as a sort of aircraft carrier in the sky, they put several into service, basically bad weather would always crash them.

edit: ran across the video on it -
https://youtu.be/VNOusZLO7y4