The new age of the airship

What if you could fly with a fraction of the carbon emissions of a conventional aeroplane? What if you could cruise through the clouds with almost zero noise? And, what if you could board your aircraft without first having to navigate a sprawling airport and all its associated infrastructure?

That’s the elevator pitch for a new generation of airships, the retro-futuristic, blimp-style vehicles that might just revolutionise air travel in the coming decade. Dotted around the world, companies from small start-ups to aerospace giant Lockheed Martin are building lighter-than-air, modern-day Zeppelins with a broad range of applications in mind.

One British company, Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), recently laid out plans for a series of short-haul flights that would enable city-hopping trips aboard its Airlander 10 craft. Proposed routes include Liverpool to Belfast, Oslo to Stockholm and Barcelona to Palma. And per passenger, HAV claims the carbon footprint of such a flight would be less than a tenth of the same journey in a conventional jet plane, because helium is used as a lifting gas to get the craft airborne.

“Three quarters of the carbon reduction almost comes for free,” says Mike Durham, HAV’s chief technical officer. “It’s helium keeping us up so we only need fuel [from four combustion engines] to push us along. Conventional aeroplanes need to burn fuel to stay up as well.” Of course, without a jet engine, airships are considerably slower than modern planes.

As the world slows down in response to COVID-19 and as we grapple with how to reduce carbon emissions from air travel and freight, airships may offer viable alternatives – and not just in passenger flights. Hybrid airships are touted for aid drops, search and rescue, eye-in-the-sky command centres and tourism. Imagine a bird’s eye tour of the North Pole or Great Barrier Reef. Some believe luxury airships could even become playthings of the super-rich, decadent floating mansions that offer the same status as a luxury yacht.

Science Focus