Helen McArdle
Transport Correspondent
IT is the largest airship in the world, offering military surveillance to
the US Army and soon to be deployed in Sweden as an eco-friendly way of
transporting wind turbine blades across the country.
But the brains behind the giant vessel are all Scots.
The aircraft, known as the Airlander 10, has been designed and manufactured
by Hybrid Air Vehicles, a company based in Bedfordshire, England, but
headed up by a team of Scots including the grandson of Clyde shipbuilding
mogul, Hugh McMillan.
The team includes head of flight science, David Stewart, from Dunblane;
chief test pilot, David Burns, from Rutherglen; chief executive Stephen
McGlennan, from Stepps in North Lanarkshire; and chairman Philip Gwyn,
grandson of Mr McMillan, the founder of Blythswood Shipyard in Scotstoun.
All four will be in Glasgow on Tuesday when Mr Stewart delivers the
prestigious IESIS Macmillan lecture at Strathclyde University.
The company, which employs around 40 people, spent 24 months building the
Airlander 10. The £40m carbon fibre airship, so far the only one in
existence, was used to monitor US Army operations from the sky but was axed
when Congress was forced to cut its military budget.
Mr McGlennan compared the vehicle, which can carry up to 48 people, to a
sort of floating CCTV device which combines aeroplane and helicopter
engineering with a modern take on Hindenberg technology and aesthetics.
“This type of aircraft really does two things differently,” he said. “One,
it can fly for a very long time in terms of days – it can fly for 21 days.
And the other thing it can do is act like a very big helicopter with very
long range, so it can do point-to-point logistics.
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