This week’s FINN Flashback features Hybrid Air Vehicles’ Airlander as it moves towards production with a new luxury interior design set to target a $45bn market over the next 20 years
Hybrid Air Vehicles unveiled a luxury interior for its Airlander airship at Farnborough Airshow 2018.
Despite some setbacks on test flights, the company was pushing ahead towards production. Tom Grundy said: “That test programme has been very key for us. This is an aircraft [with] all-new technology and it’s an all-new configuration. So, when people have seen that test programme, they’ve seen a prototype aircraft flying in some ways its very first flight test and expanding its envelope and expanding our knowledge of it.”
“So, yes there have been some incidents that people have seen along the way. But its function was for us to learn what we needed to learn to take the aircraft into production, to access the $45 billion market that’s there over the next 20 years
He said the team were now working on taking the production aircraft forward.
“So when we see the aircraft flying at Farnborough, it will be the type certified production variant that’ll be in the skies here. [We’re] not quite ready to announce exactly when yet – that’s to come but, that’s the route that we’re on,” he commented.
Styling it out
Hybrid Air Vehicles revealed an artist’s impression of the 46-metre long passenger cabin at Farnborough Airshow 2018.
Grundy said: “The idea behind that is to be able to take typically around 16 to 20 people in luxury and comfort. I’m talking double bedrooms. I’m talking being able to walk around, move around, eat at the bar, have a drink whilst looking from horizon to horizon, including down through the floor at the world going past.”
A flight you won’t want to end
He added: “And to be able to do that and go to places that aircraft typically can’t go to. So, we’re talking about three-day adventures to perhaps the North Pole, perhaps the Amazon, or perhaps to watch a safari from a quiet, comfortable aircraft above.”
This is about “creating a flight that you won’t want to end,” Grundy said.
