Want to Promote Sustainable Air Travel? Try an Airship.

Flying Whales’ Airship, Rendered Image

Air travel is the most damaging form of transportation that impacts the environment, and with an expected increase in the demand for flight, researchers are looking for ways to combat this. While the options for replacing jet fuel have been developing, it is not being done fast enough. As a result, experts believe that a re-launch of the century-old airship could be a much faster approach to solving this crisis.

The first recorded airship to have been successfully flown was built by Henri Giffard in Paris, in 1852. Around 50 years later, an evolved version of this airship was used to transport passengers around the globe aided by the Zeppelin Corporation up until 1937, when the Hindenburg airship burst into flames while landing in New Jersey. This event turned people off of airships, causing the focus on common fixed-wing airplanes that we see in modern times.

Nowadays, this old method of transportation is in a revival period. Given the low carbon emissions, and no requirement to build expensive infrastructure such as airports or roads (they can load and unload cargo while hovering), it has become a clear sustainable solution for both commercial and cargo use. Companies like Flying Whales are currently developing a 200-meter-long airship that will be held in the air with 14 cells filled with helium gas. It will be propelled through the air with a hybrid-electric system powered by sustainable aviation fuel.

The goal with these ships is to develop go-to transport for cargo delivery – which is currently taken up by helicopters. Flying Whales claims its airships will produce less than 10% of emissions produced by helicopters, and not need to damage the landscape during the delivery process as they will not need to land, meaning it could possibly connect more small and rural areas to the supply chain.

Even though these are early stages, things seem to be looking up. Tom Grundy, the CEO of Hybrid Air Vehicles, explains that “if you look at the different forms of transport that we’ve got today, you’ve got ultra-fast planes and then you’ve got everything else that goes over the surface. So, what happens when you put a new form of connection in the market? The world’s open for us to rethink what we do by air”.

References

https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2023/05/solar-powered-airships-could-help-climate-friendly-air-travel-get-off-the-ground/

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/flying-whales-airships-hnk-spc-intl/index.html

https://www.positive.news/environment/airships-are-back-promising-to-clean-up-aviation/