User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail 531: Pegasus vs. Black Dragon/@comment-7418318-20170414215900/@comment-7418318-20170415110932

Maybe he never encountered an airship (or never bothered to grab it instead of blasting it away from a distance) in all his 400+ years of living and thus didn't know he can't handle being on one.

That actually makes sense. 400 years ago they probably didn't have any and since then he lived a rather reclusive life away from civilization as far as we know.