ATHENS, Greece (AP) – Dominique Maniere has spent his life drifting over unfamiliar countries: Norway, America, the deserts of North Africa and anywhere else airships are paid to go on slow patrol, carrying giant advertisements or powerful surveillance cameras.

The white-bearded Frenchman is wrapping up a three-month job in Athens, flying a blimp for the Greek police during the Olympics as part of a massive security operation.

While they scoured the city for signs of a terrorist attack, he looked out over Athens’ ancient sites and newly built stadiums and infrastructure.

“To fly over Athens, and look at the Acropolis. I never dreamed that I could do that,” Maniere, a dirigible flier for the past 21 years, told The Associated Press. “Normally I don’t prefer to fly over cities … but it was very nice to fly over Athens.”

The 60-metre (200-foot) long blimp, laden with cameras and sensors, became a daily feature of the city’s skyline as it hummed over Olympic venues and hilltop monuments, streaming video of street demonstrations, traffic jams and marathon runners during the August 13-29 Games.

Data from the airship was used together with images from 1,200 new street cameras, police helicopters and surveillance vans as part of the euro1.2 billion (US$1.5 billion) security operation that also included the September 17-28 Paralympics. The operation officially ended on October 4.

The blimp, operated by Airship Management Services Inc, based in Greenwich, Connecticut, has stayed on a few extra days while the company discussed potential future business deals.

These include possibly providing security at the Beijing Games in 2008, watching over the Muslim pilgrimage at Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, and filming Greek holiday destinations for the Greek tourism ministry, company representative Alexander Spyrou said.

Spyrou said Athens was part of a growing demand for ariel surveillance following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

“Advertising in America and passenger carriages in Europe have been our bread and butter businesses, but more and more and it’s being used as a surveillance vehicle … It’s a reliable eye in the sky,” Spyrou told the AP.

“We have many inquiries particularly on the security angle,” he said. “More and more police forces are asking us about using them for traffic control, pollution monitoring, border protection and coastal patrols.”

He argued the helium-filled balloon provides a cheap and stable “platform” for sensors, with advances expected to include unmanned and high-altitude blimps over the next few years.

The Athens contract was worth euro1.46 million (US$1.8 million).

Spyrou’s firm leased blimps for surveillance and use as overhead billboards for Olympics at Los Angeles in 1984, Seoul in 1988 and Atlanta in 1996, and were also used by the British military to track the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland.