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    Aircraft Technology, Integration and OperationsLighter-Than-Air Systems
    Aircraft Technology, Integration and Operations

    Airships in 2025: Orders booked, production sites selected and flight tests progressing

    Cat HofackerBy
    By Alan Farnham -
    Airships in 2025: Orders booked, production sites selected and flight tests progressing
    LTA Research’s Pathfinder 1 flying over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Credit: LTA Research

    The Lighter-Than-Air Systems Technical Committee stimulates development of knowledge related to airships and aerostats for use in a host of applications from transportation to surveillance.

    In November, Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) of the U.K. and ZeroAvia, maker of electric powertrains, announced they will collaborate to create an all hydrogen-electric, zero-emission version of HAV’s Airlander 10 hybrid airship. HAV said in October it had secured its first military order for Airlander 10: three craft reserved by an unnamed customer. In August, HAV and the U.S. Department of Defense wrapped up a two-year study that found use of Airlander 10 in contested environments could reduce fuel costs.

    In October, Lighter Than Air Research (LTA) flew its 124-meter Pathfinder 1 (P1), the largest aircraft in the world and first rigid airship to be built in 85 years, over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. This was the latest in a series of test flights begun in 2024. Data from the flights is being incorporated into the proof-of-concept vehicle. For example, greater than anticipated surging of helium gas cells has resulted in LTA reinforcing the bulkheads between cells.

    “Think of how X-planes generated critical data for supersonic flight and spaceflight programs — we’re doing the same now for modern airships,” LTA CEO Brett Crozier explained.

    In May, Crozier told IEEE Spectrum that P1, though massive, is merely a subscale prototype for the larger Pathfinder X airship LTA intends to build next.

    Pathfinder 1 flying over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Credit: LTA Research

    In March, AT2 Aerospace, a spinoff of Lockheed Martin, announced it had booked the first two orders for its Z1 hybrid airship. The company values the first, from U.K. airship operator Straightline Aviation, at $50 million. The second, from Arctic Airships, an Alaska provider of remote logistics, was for two Z1s with an option to buy 18 more.

    An illustration of AT2 Aerospace’s Z1 hybrid airship in the livery of Straightline Aviation. Credit: Straightline Aviation

    In May, France’s Flying Whales released artists’ conceptions for an 80,000-square-meter (861,112-square-foot) facility where it will manufacture and test its LCA6OT rigid airship. The company said the site, in the French countryside near the town of Laruscade in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, will employ 300. Two other production sites are planned in Quebec and in the Asia-Pacific region. In July, the company took delivery of a prototype electric power transmission system made by Safran, S.A.

    Goodyear observed the 100th anniversary of the first flight of its namesake blimp by having all three of its North American airships (a fourth is based in Europe) make a flyover in June of its Wingfoot Lake hangar outside Akron, Ohio. To further mark the anniversary, the company is selling merchandise that includes a T-shirt reading “Blimps are Cool. Buy tires.”

    In market news, helium prices stabilized. Market authority Phil Kornbluth told gasworld magazine in June that after an 18-year period of intermittent shortages, helium is now plentiful and supplies of the gas are dependable. The market, he said, has flipped from being a seller’s to a buyer’s.

    Opener image: LTA Research’s Pathfinder 1 flying over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Credit: LTA Research

     

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