The distinctive shape of the world’s longest aircraft, the Airlander hybrid airship has become a regular sight in the skies south of Bedford this summer as test pilots put the revolutionary machine through its paces.
With the news that they have now completed over 300 miles of flight testing in 2017, a revolution in air travel has taken another step closer. Capable of staying airborne for up to five days the Airlander has a potential future in roles as diverse as air sea rescue, transport delivery and luxury air cruising.
Although designed to reach an altitude of 6Km, the trials are being flown at lower altitudes, affording the local population with an extraordinary close up view of this spectacular new direction in air travel.
The 7,000 square metres of fabric that make up the Airlander’s envelope holds a vast quantity of helium, but unexpectedly the craft is not lighter than air. It requires a small amount of forward momentum to stay airborne but is nonetheless the most fuel efficient and therefore greenest powered flying machine there is.
There have been four successful test flights during 2017 and the craft has clocked up impressive speeds of up to 37 knots. UAV, the owners of Airlander (whose investors include Iron Maiden front man Bruce Dickinson) released a map on their Facebook account showing the routes the craft has been flying over the last few flights.
Many of you have been asking us about the flight path Airlander takes during her test flights so our flight scientists…
Posted by Hybrid Air Vehicles on Tuesday, 8 August 2017
Curiously enough, this is not the first time that the population around these parts have witnessed new directions in air travel. The Airlander 10’s home hangar at Cardington airfield is where Short Brothers built and tested their prototype airships more than 100 years ago.
This time around, testing has not been entirely hitch free, as evidenced by last year’s undignified slow-motion nosedive caused by a mooring line becoming entangled with power cables. But even that was a spur to technological innovation. The Airlander now comes equipped with its own enormous airbags that can be rapidly inflated to cocoon the carbon composite flight deck gondola in the event of a less than gentle final decent.
Although born of ideas that are over a century old, the graceful, innovative, environmentally friendly, awe inspiring Airlander is looking more and more like the future of air travel.
