With its “substantially damaged” prototype back in the hangar for the second time in 15 months, a feeling of deflation once again pervades the Bedford base of Hybrid Air Vehicles, developer of the lighter-than-air Airlander 10 experimental aircraft. However, the developers of the world’s largest flying structure insist the latest mishap will not crush their four-year effort to certificate the hybrid airship, secure customers and introduce it to service.
On 18 November – six sorties into its flight test campaign – the helium-filled aircraft broke free of its mooring mast, triggering a safety feature that collapsed the hull, damaged the structure and forced HAV to put the flight test programme on hold. It followed an August 2016 incident when a hard landing on the Airlander’s second flight – albeit one dubbed the world’s slowest air crash – wrecked the gondola and led to eight months of repairs.
After that first calamity, HAV chief executive Stephen McGlennan noted wryly that “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Adopting that same attitude, he and his executive team must now be feeling like Popeye after a dose of spinach. It is just as well, because the company will need fortitude aplenty to ensure shareholders stay on board and continue to fund efforts to create a type-certified aircraft, despite HAV having no prototype to fly.
Seen here crossing the perimeter fence at Cardington on an earlier test flight, Airlander at least proves that size buys attention
Geoff Robinson Photography/REX/Shutterstock
In an interview with FlightGlobal in October, McGlennan disclosed plans to establish a factory and launch production in 2018 on the back of an order from an undisclosed overseas customer. Since the 18 November incident – which is under investigation and subject to an insurance claim of the maximum insured value of £32 million ($42.6 million) – HAV has arranged visits for potential customers, who, according to a source, “seem to be very supportive”.
It is believed HAV will use any insurance pay-out to move towards the development of a production-ready aircraft in 2018 using data accumulated from around 15h of flying. In a statement after the incident, HAV says: “We have gained a great deal of data, information and expertise from our previous successful flight tests. We look forward to using the knowledge gained…to develop and build production-standard Airlander aircraft.”
When we visited Cardington in October, all seemed to be going well for HAV. Since resuming flight testing in April, the company had completed 9.5h of further flight testing on top of the 3.5h carried out before the 2016 incident, and had just achieved permission from the regulator to move to a second phase of the campaign, which would have seen the flight test envelope gradually increase from 4,000ft in a 15nm (28km) radius of the aerodrome to 7,000ft and 75nm.
The company had also been given the go-ahead to take off and land in 15kt (27km/h) winds, having been restricted to 10kt. With wind around the Cardington facility typically between those speeds, HAV had been restricted in when it could take the 92m (300ft)-long Airlander from its hangar. On 18 November, the aircraft had been secured on the airfield after a flight the previous day, and, while HAV has not discussed circumstances, wind speeds at nearby Luton airport were around 11kt.
HAV had been “very close to announcing a first customer” – believed to be a government entity – when McGlennan spoke to FlightGlobal in October. That customer would have funded the development of a certificated aircraft which it would have used to conduct flight trials using communications or surveillance equipment installed in the gondola.
The contract would have given the company its first actual revenue: until now the company has funded the development of the Airlander mostly with $28 million raised from shareholders and small amounts of government and EU funding. HAV was also seeking a further $20 million from the institutional market ahead of a planned initial public offering in late 2018 or early 2019 to secure a further $73 million.
During that interview, referring to the 2016 incident but in hindsight sounding prophetic, McGlennan noted: “You can’t do something like this without setbacks, so you need a level of understanding from your shareholders and they have certainly provided that.” Although HAV has 2,000 small backers – most thrilled by the prospect of a UK start-up being at the vanguard of a new airship era – a handful of high-net-worth individuals own three-quarters of the equity.
McGlennan told FlightGlobal that either upfront payments from the first customer or the $20 million in new funding would be enough to “transform the company” by “getting us to commencement of production”. This would entail HAV constructing a second version of the Airlander, and moving away from the rented historic Cardington hangar, where the UK’s first airships were constructed after the First World War, to a new production facility.
Finding a site would be relatively easy. “Because all we do on site is assembly, we could do it anywhere there is a large structure,” said McGlennan. “We don’t, for instance, need a heavy duty floor.” The location, however, would almost certainly be near Bedford, to ensure HAV could retain its 80 specialist staff and supply chain. “Supply chain management is vital for us,” he said. “We have a cracking supply chain.”
The automated safety response to coming unmoored was deflation
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As for any start-up aircraft developer, getting an aircraft design to certification and finding a launch customer is just one hurdle. Generating cash to fund and maintain production and stay solvent is arguably more difficult. HAV’s business plan has been for an eventual production rate of one aircraft a month, although delivering just four aircraft a year would “make us a billion pound company in terms of market capitalisation”, said McGlennan.
“That will unlock things for us,” he noted, adding, in an acknowledgement that US defence giant Lockheed Martin is HAV’s only real rival in designing a new-generation lighter-than-air transport: “We are deeply pragmatic about how difficult this is to do. There is no point in being the bright British people that thought of this first and then being overtaken by a company with deeper pockets.”
HAV’s founders began conceiving the Airlander in the 1980s, and eventually the company, which was established in 2007, secured a customer. Via a Northrop Grumman-fronted campaign and production licence, the US Army chose the Airlander for its Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) programme. Although the aircraft was shipped to the USA and conducted its maiden flight in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 2012, the programme was axed a year later.
HAV re-secured the rights to the design and were given International Traffic in Arms Regulations security clearance to develop a civilian version, which it believed would find markets ranging from specialist cargo to long-term surveillance and even high-end leisure. After two years in development and four years after that first US flight, the new Airlander prototype took to the air again in August 2016.
The Airlander is unlike conventional airships in that just two-thirds of its lift is provided by its helium-filled bladders, with aerodynamic lift and engine thrust delivering the rest. The company claims the design “combines the best of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft with lighter-than-air technology”. The 10t payload aircraft can potentially stay airborne for three weeks, although with on-board pilots, its endurance would naturally be much less.
The hull’s skin is a three-layered rigid sandwich of Vectra for strength, waterproof Tedlar, and Mylar to keep the gas in. Four Thielert Centurion engines provide vectored thrust, with rudders and elevators enabling pilots in the suspended gondola to control the aircraft. Air valves and a flexible diaphragm allow the helium to expand as the aircraft rises, pushing the air out. As the Airlander descends, the helium contracts and fans suck air back in.
The second phase of flight testing – which HAV was poised to embark on around the time of the incident – would have freed the company to take the aircraft as far as England’s east coast, but, even more importantly, to Fairford and Farnborough, sites of next July’s Royal International Air Tattoo and major air show. The intention had been to display the aircraft at one or both of these events, albeit in a brief, if slow, flypast.
Such a high-profile appearance would have provided a publicity fillip for the programme at a critical time. Now, with doubts over whether the prototype will fly again, HAV will be compelled to seek other ways to keep the Airlander story afloat as it continues to seek new funding and customers for one of modern aviation’s most innovative and eagerly-followed projects. A novel idea and public affection, however, do not necessarily equate to the firm orders HAV needs.
Source: Flight International
