The future of air travel?

Large airships could be used to reduce the amount of freight traffic on our over-congested road system.

I think it could help re-invent the cruise like phenomena of the past and make for great fun…i’d holiday on it!

I actually believe airships could have a very specialized market

Watch this space, i read an article in the Times, few months back stating how Richard Branson would(?) in the future think about launching airships over the rail network??

personally i see air traval in the future to adapt a 2 factor approach, the first being green, fuel efficient engines and traval, the second being supersonic traval, lets watch this space.:)

I actually believe airships could have a very specialized market – in less developed countries, where planes would be too expensive for population of certain income and where are no spread out highway networks or high speed railway networks. Central asia and africa come to mind, perhaps even some of eastern europe and latin america or central china.

Something like 200 seats, cruise speed of 180 km/h, with specialized airports/landing sites. Especially in areas without passport control or inter-country trips, airships could compete with aviation at ranges of up to 800-1000 km.

Benefits for passengers- faster loading/unloading (construction and lots of space would allow for lots of doors and wide aisles), airports closer to cities (less noise and less area for airports needed)

Sure, you would still take almost 5 hours to fly 800 kms, compared to 2 hours in prop plane and an hour or so in jet plane, but A) seats could be vastly cheaper (this is a must, if this condition is not met, at least 50% cheaper seat than cheapest airplane fare, then whole ideas is a no go) B) additional time could be saved because of optimised infrastructure for getting the aircraft to/from gate and getting PAX on/of aircraft.

Problems at this point are, i believe, technical, not even technological. It all depends on just how big/small this niche market is and would it be worthwhile to invest money into development of such airships and the infrastructure for them. I believe, once that development is done with, cost of such airship and cost of such airport would be far lower than for conventional planes/airports.

Did the A380 (or dreamlifter) get an allergic reaction ?:D 😀