In addressing some of remote Canada’s most pressing issues — unreliable transportation, the high cost of goods, inadequate housing — there’s growing support behind airships as a viable means to creating solutions.
“We already had limited transportation and now it's becoming more limited, so the airships are a necessary means to access the North,” Prentice said. The cost to operate an airship service could be offset by also deploying them to remote mining camps where it’s too cost-prohibitive to build roads for trucking in supplies and trucking out ore for processing.
Twenty or more companies around the globe currently have airship projects in various stages of development, he noted.The company’s Airlander 10 model is a hybrid aircraft measuring 92 metres long with a payload capacity of 10 tonnes. It’s estimated to reduce carbon emissions by 70 per cent compared to that of a traditional airplane.
In addition to hauling freight and passenger travel, Grundy said HAV is looking to sectors such as communications and surveillance as well as tourism and leisure travel for future applications. Flying Whales, a France-based company that was launched in 2012, is developing the LCA60T, a 200-metre-long lighter-than-air vessel with a 60-tonne payload capacity.
“Everything that you would need in a standard hospital is transported by airship and delivered anywhere,” Jolimony said. Jolimony said the company has identified remote areas including northern Canada, Amazonia/Brazil, and South Africa as the regions most in need of these services. Its list of strategic partners includes the global consulting firm Roland Berger, the French engineering company Ingérop, and Siemens, among others.