Hovering on the Edge: Will airships go mainstream… again?

Remote logistics

The Brazilian state of Amazonas is more than twice the size of Texas, and almost entirely covered by dense rainforest that precludes the sort of infrastructure that most developed nations take for granted. Aside from port cities along the Amazon River, other population centers – and most resource deposits – in this massive state are cut off from Brazil’s highway network, impeding Brazilian President Michel Temer’s agenda of developing the region.

“Countries like Brazil don’t have the same infrastructure that you find in the U.S. and Europe, and so lots of companies are contacting us [to bridge this gap]. We are discovering lots of new opportunities for airships,” said Marcelo Felippes, Airship do Brasil’s founder, whose company successfully tested its ADB-3-X01 airship in July. Airship do Brasil believes that its aircraft will finally unlock development in the Amazon basin by offering the range of airplanes, with the landing capability of helicopters, at the price point of overland transport.

“They [airships] will allow access to remote places in the world that have no airports, harbors or roads, all while providing a greener solution,” Chapman Freeborn’s Evans agrees. “I can envision some market for mining, oil and gas in remote regions using them at a localized level. However, there is the question of demand to move very heavy loads to remote locations with no airport.”

Deploying a large airship to handle cargo for a remote delivery could prove far more difficult when there are a limited number in operation. It’s an economies-of-scale problem that airships will have to overcome. “Either the airship would have to fly itself there, which could take a long time, or it would have to be reduced to a transportable size,” Evans cautioned.

Felippes, who founded Airship do Brasil in 2005, hopes to convince skeptics like Evans that the demand does exist and that airships are up to the task. Airship do Brasil’s ADB-3-X01 has immediate regional applications servicing remote areas, delivering oversized materials like equipment for electricity and petroleum companies as well as material for electronic communications like cellphone towers, Felippes explained. “We don’t have a problem with volume. The payload is limited to 30 tonnes, but volume is 330 cubic meters.” According to Airship do Brasil, that adds up to seven truckloads, but the operation costs are “just a bit more than one truckload, but much less than an airplane or other type of transportation.”

July’s inaugural ADB-3-X01 fight is about the middle point of Airship do Brasil’s production timeline. Felippes expects the first commercial model to roll out some time in mid-2019.