The £60 million Airlander 10 mega airship is the size of a football pitch and can carry up to 100 passengers. It doesn’t need a runway and can land on grass, gravel, sand or even water
The Airlander 10 has a very cheeky nickname due to its shape(Image: Getty)
The world’s largest aircraft, cheekily dubbed the “flying bum” due to its peculiar shape, doesn’t even require a runway for landing. The £60 million “mega airship”, complete with double bedrooms and an onboard bar, is set to redefine air travel.
Hybrid Air Vehicles, the manufacturers, aim to have a commercial fleet of the Airlander 10 soaring through the skies by 2029. At a whopping 92-metres, it will be the world’s largest aircraft, designed to revolutionise the way we travel.
The makers also anticipate that the aircraft will be able to reach locations currently “inaccessible to all but helicopters”.
That is because the Airlander 10 can take off and land without the use of a runway. They claim it can land on “grass, gravel, sand, marsh, or even water”, requiring only “very short” take off and landing distances.
George said: “The aircraft can land in any open space, it doesn’t need a paved runway, so all of a sudden you have taken away some of the barriers to entry for the aircraft. You can try out something because you’re not committing to millions of dollars of infrastructure.”
He added: “You could take that aircraft on a multi-place trip. You could go from the coast of Saudi Arabia in-land to places that are really inaccessible to all but helicopters now and that aircraft at its maximum capacity that can hold 100 people.”
George – whose company purchased the design after the US military abandoned the project following the Iraq War’s conclusion – embraced the “flying bum” nickname but told the Mirror he has “personally never seen it.”
Nevertheless, head of marketing Hannah Cunningham revealed that a refined version destined for commercial aviation would be “less bum” than earlier iterations. Currently, the company has no operational prototypes, having instead built two mock-ups of the passenger compartment that will be suspended beneath the helium-filled flotation system.
The firm previously operated a test aircraft which caused traffic gridlock when it soared above Bedford in August 2016. However, it has since been withdrawn from service.
That situation may soon shift as manufacturers HAV have secured a site in Doncaster to construct the new, enhanced Airlander 10 within the coming 12 to 18 months. The company then faces a lengthy Civil Aviation Authority approval process that could result in the South Yorkshire facility churning out two dozen units annually from 2030.
The aircraft promises an end to the cramped, deafening cabins of conventional aeroplanes, according to HAV, with the vessel described as a “more comfortable” flying experience. It cruises at 3,000 metres, sufficiently low that air-pressurisation isn’t required.
With a maximum speed of 80mph, it avoids the drone and vibration of contemporary jets. While it sacrifices speed, being six times slower than a Boeing Dreamliner, it compensates with endurance, claiming the capability to cover 4,000 miles in a single journey.
The Airlander 10 is set to be one of the most environmentally friendly aircrafts, thanks to a collaboration between HAV and UK-American company ZeroAvia. The partnership aims to power the aircraft with hydrogen-electric engines, significantly reducing the Airlander 10’s emissions to perhaps just 1 or 2 per cent of those from a typical kerosene-powered commercial plane.
Val Miftakhov of ZeroAvia commented: “Airlander is another exciting airframe for line-fit for our powertrains as it can open up a whole new market in air travel due to its range, efficiency, and ability to operate from almost anywhere.”
He added: “Like ZeroAvia, Hybrid Air Vehicles is an aerospace innovator with exciting manufacturing and growth plans for the UK that can deliver hundreds of well-paid jobs in different regions in the UK.”
