Airships were so cool... and unfortunately, so flammable.
Originally they had wooden decks, boatloads of fuel, and no meaningful armor. Nowadays their made with ~70,000 tons of steel, and fire is still a major concern.
On 12 July 2020, a fire started on a lower vehicle-storage deck while the ship was undergoing maintenance at Naval Base San Diego. It took four days for firefighters to extinguish the fire, which injured at least 63 sailors and civilians and severely damaged the ship. After a lengthy investigation into the cause of the fire, a sailor was charged with arson but was acquitted at trial. Repairs to the ship were estimated to take up to seven years and cost up to $3.2 billion, so the ship was decommissioned on 15 April 2021 and sold for scrap.
They don't deal with rough weather well, though.
In the context of transportation planes seem to have significant issues dealing with loons wielding laser pointers. So unless you classify those as military technology you will have a hard time finding something cheaper and easier to get your hands on.
With the incorporation of superchargers and turbochargers in aircraft engines (and an overall increase in power), this drastically increased the altitude limits for propeller aircraft.
When the airships could still fly higher than aircraft, that reduced their vulnerability to direct attack.