Latest news with #TomGrundy
The Independent
26-02-2025
- Automotive
- The Independent
Company behind world's biggest aircraft aims to smash record with new model
The company behind one of the world's biggest aircraft has announced its plans to go even bigger with a new aircraft designed for moving more freight. Over the past few years, Bedford -based company Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) has been developing the Airlander 10, nicknamed 'the flying bum' due to its rear-end-like shape, in an effort to create zero-emission aircraft. The Airlander 10 made headlines in 2016 when it left the ground for the first time, undertaking six test flights, including one where it crashed into the ground when trying to land at its base at Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire. No crew were injured. The aircraft is designed using lighter-than-air technology and a helium-filled hull with the aim of undergoing a zero-emissions flight by 2030. The prototype aircraft was eventually retired in 2019 after HAV collected enough data to start developing a production-ready model. Tom Grundy, the HAV chief executive since 2019, says the company is developing another project, the Airlander 50, that the company says will be the 'future of heavy lift freight transport'. The new model will have a 50-tonne payload, which is five times the size of the Airlander 10, carrying up to 200 passengers with a range of 2,200 kilometres at a maximum payload. 'Many industries such as remote mining and humanitarian aid rely on substantial, sometimes fragile infrastructure to transport cargo,' HAV said. 'Airlander 50 will offer a new solution enabling efficient movement of heavy and awkward freight without damaging the environment.' The plans for the new aircraft state it will be large enough to carry six 20ft shipping containers, with enough space to transport 48 passengers if the space is used for the containers. HAV predicts that a fully electric Airlander 50 could be available by 2033, promising to reduce CO2 emissions by 1.15kg per tonne for freight per km when compared to a conventional airplane. The company said its technology is designed to be scaled up, so it is expecting a smooth transition from the Airlander 10 development to the Airlander 50. The company also says it eventually hopes to see an Airlander 200, with the ability to fly 200 tonnes of freight long distances. HAV has blended the technologies from airplanes and airships to create the Airlander 10. It hopes to have a zero-emissions aircraft option for customers in service by 2030 once all four engines in the aircraft become electric. Mr Grundy told The Guardian that the Airlander can go 'in between the two extremes' of fast but polluting and expensive planes, and cleaner, cheaper but much slower ferries. He also says the cost of operating an Airlander is 'at or below the cost' of using small passenger planes. The Airlander 10 has caught the eye of luxury tour companies, as well as airlines for island hopping in the Mediterranean, due to not needing a long runway, but rather a flat space about 200 metres across. 'It doesn't have to be stuck to going between today's airports,' Mr Grundy told the publication. 'It can go into different places. And yet it's faster than moving around the world over the surface. 'It's faster than those ferry journeys. It can often be faster than a train journey, very often faster than a car journey. So providing this middle option.' While the freight-carrying Airlander 50 is still a few years away, the company hopes that when the Airlander 10 is ready, it will be a game changer for tourism. The aircraft is designed to land on ice, sand or water, meaning it can reach remote locations without harming the environment. The inside of the large aircraft will be able to be tailored, with spaces for 90 seats to offer days out sightseeing, 40 seats for dinner in the sky, or eight double en-suite rooms.
The Guardian
24-02-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
‘The flying bum': can a UK firm making huge airships finally get off the ground?
It's a dreary day in Bedford, but on a flight simulator the skies above San Francisco airport are blue and the wind is low. That is a good thing, because there is an amateur at the joystick of the world's biggest aircraft. The flight simulator models trips by the Airlander 10, which is part airship, part aeroplane. If all goes to plan for its designer, Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), two dozen will be built each year from 2030 at a factory in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. The virtual 98-metre aircraft noses its way into the air gently, responding gradually to adjustments to its heading about 300 metres (1,000 feet) over the city. This reporter is an old hand when it comes to crashing flight simulators, but the journey passes without incident, albeit with considerable help from one of the five people who has actually flown in the real thing. Those flights astonished crowds when the prototype lifted off in Bedfordshire, an hour north of London, in 2016. The prototype was retired in 2019, after gathering enough data on flying and – once, not fatally – crashing. HAV is now preparing to run the 'scale up' gauntlet: going from an eye-catching first model to building a factory employing 1,200 people, and then making airships capable of transporting 10 tonnes of cargo, or up to 130 passengers, at up to 90mph. Tom Grundy, the HAV chief executive since 2019, says the Airlander can go 'in between the two extremes' of fast but polluting and expensive planes, and cleaner, cheaper but much slower ferries. For short plane journeys run by regional airlines, the costs of operation using an Airlander 'are at or below the cost of what they're operating today' with smaller passenger planes, he says. The Airlander will not need miles of tarmac runway far from city centres, just a flat space about 200 metres across and a truck with a mooring mast. 'It doesn't have to be stuck to going between today's airports,' Grundy says. 'It can go into different places. And yet it's faster than moving around the world over the surface. It's faster than those ferry journeys. It can often be faster than a train journey, very often faster than a car journey. So providing this middle option.' The European regional airline Air Nostrum has said it will buy 20 to carry passengers between Mediterranean islands. The luxury tour company Grands Espaces wants the craft to take passengers on jaunts over the Arctic. HAV has also looked at replacing ferries in the Scottish Highlands and across the Irish Sea between Belfast and Liverpool. Unlike normal planes, weight is the key concern rather than volume. That should mean much more spacious seats for passengers, while luxury tourists will each have double bedrooms. Freight shipping is even more promising, with many customers who would value quicker journeys for bulky loads than ships, but with less expensive fuel burned than planes. HAV is not the only company to spy a gap: France's Flying Whales is hoping to build a dirigible for cargo only, while Lighter than Air Research (LTA) is focusing on humanitarian missions. They are all in the precarious startup phase. HAV has spent £140m since 2007, but the latest accounts showed just £400,000 cash on hand at the end of 2023. Other low-emission flight companies, including a clutch employing electric vertical take-off and landing, have run into difficulties recently. The German companies Lilium and Volocopter filed for bankruptcy in late 2024. Yet HAV is aiming to spend a fraction of the cash of some aerospace rivals. It is seeking to raise £300m in equity funding, with the first chunk by the summer. (It is angling for part of the cash from the Labour government's national wealth fund.) That money, plus deposits on orders worth a notional £1.5bn, should make the company cashflow positive, Grundy says. Grundy has brought several aircraft from design to flight in a career that includes fighter jet manufacturer BAE Systems and work on the Airbus A380, at 73 metres another leviathan of the skies. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Carbon reduction, in perhaps the hardest sector to decarbonise, was one motivator for Grundy joining HAV. The company claims emissions will be 90% lower than a conventional plane. That could get to 100%, as it plans to switch from internal combustion engines to hydrogen fuel cells to power the Airlander's four propellers. The reason for the lower energy use is obvious – balloons float – but that only provides 60% of the lift, a 'headstart against gravity'. The Airlander is also an aeroplane: the shape of the balloon – made from a composite of Kevlar and two other materials – makes it a giant wing. That also saves on expensive – and finite – helium. The Airlander started life as a project for the US Department of Defense, which wanted a surveillance aircraft. HAV says Airlanders will stay airborne for five days, making them 10 times cheaper than fixed-wing drones and easier to control than spy balloons. The company has a deal with BAE Systems to handle sales to military customers. Grundy declined to comment when asked if BAE or another technology partner, France's Dassault, could become investors. HAV's designers came up with an innovative double-ellipsoid airframe that gives the wing shape without sagging when 10 tonnes hang in a gondola below it. The shape also provided its very unofficial nickname: the 'flying bum'. 'I think we've got more important things to do than be annoyed about that,' says Grundy when asked the inevitable. 'To feel the warmth, the engagement, and sometimes the humour of how people responded to that, it actually was quite powerful for me.' The flying bum could also get much bigger: HAV is already planing a 50-tonne, 120-metre version for freight customers that could carry wind turbine blades up remote hills. Eventually Grundy wants to make a 200-tonne version that would blow past the A380's 84-tonne payload – and potentially open up the possibility of the world's biggest aircraft crisscrossing the Pacific. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937, when the German airship's hydrogen balloon burst into flames over New Jersey, made lighter-than-air craft seem a thing of the past for a long time, but the sight of a 98-metre ship in the sky is also something out of sci-fi future. In real life the Airlander (filled with non-flammable helium) was enough to stop traffic whenever the prototype flew. 'I never thought I would be in the lighter-than-air space when I started my career,' Grundy says. 'I think airships have been very, very hard to make practical. I'm attracted to what we're doing here because it is practical. But once I got into it, you start to realise how many future visions that people have of the world include aircraft a bit like this.'
