Adventure & Wildlife Magazine - Vol 1|Issue 5-6| Nov 16 - Jan 17 Vol 1|Issue 5-6| Nov 16 - Jan 17 | Page 52

ADVENTURE & WILDLIFE
Hybrid Air Vehicles designs and builds Airlanders. For
the first few, they will also operate them, maintain them,
and train up the pilots needed to fly them. They have a
world-leading team who have designed and built the
Airlander 10 to the highest specification in record time.
in materials to create a truly revolutionary aircraft. The
Airlander is a “hybrid” of an aeroplane and an airship
– we get 40% of our lift from the aerodynamic wing
shape of our aircraft, and 60% from the helium fill – it is
therefore inherently more efficient than other forms of
air transport. It uses the very latest fabrics to maintain its
shape and is technologically years ahead of other aircraft.
Airlander has flown before under a US Government
programme, but is now being developed for commercial
purposes, such as freight, remote access, aid distribution,
advertising, surveillance, communications and luxury
passenger transport.
They start with CAD designs, make small scale
demonstrators and then do further wind tunnel and
computational fluid dynamic testing to ensure we
have the optimal designs. Then we construct the
Airlanders using the very latest materials available.
We have a supply chain of some 40+ (mainly British)
companies who supply the different parts of Airlander
10 to order.
Airlander aims to revolutionise transport and
travel by and has a 10 tonne payload, and ultimately could
They believe in a new vision for air transport. That new produce a range of hybrid aircraft capable of carrying up
vision is called Airlander. Hybrid Air Vehicles’ goal to 1000 tonnes.
is to change the world of aviation through Airlander.
Their believe that aircraft should be able to land and It is one of the lowest carbon emissions aircraft in the
take-off anywhere, should be able to fly for weeks at a world,having game-changing endurance (it can stay
time, should be low cost and should pollute as little as airborne for weeks rather than hours), providing
possible.
significantly lower delivery cost for airborne freight and
being able to land anywhere (water, land, desert, ice)
Airlander takes the best of aeroplanes, helicopters and thus opening up new point-to-point routes to previously
airships and combines them with the latest innovations inaccessible areas.
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Vol 1|Issue 5-6|Nov 16 - Jan 17