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MONTREAL — From the seventh floor of his Montreal office, Arnaud Thioulouse enjoys a view of the midtown rail tracks and freight trains chugging toward the horizon. But the CEO of Flying Whales Quebec has a different transportation mode in mind for ferrying goods to far-flung locales: airships.
“The question is not if there will be such a craft in the air, but when,” he said.
Thioulouse is part of a bevy of engineers, academics and investors across the globe pouring time and hundreds of millions of dollars into creating aircraft far more advanced than an old-fashioned zeppelin or the Goodyear blimp, which turns 100 this year, putting Canada on the front line.
With their low emissions and high carrying capacity, these hovering behemoths have the potential to bring essential goods and medical care to northern communities, serve remote mines or forestry operations and conduct military patrols, all at relatively low cost and minimal environmental impact — if financing and technical hurdles can be overcome.
In 2023, Flying Whales signed a non-binding deal with the Inuit-owned Canadian North airline to study airships’ potential to haul cargo above the 60th parallel. Quebec has invested $77 million into the company, which set up in Canada in 2022.
The company hopes to run initial test flights in late 2027 and its first commercial forays in 2029.
In a twist on their cigar-shaped predecessors, modern airships tend to more closely resemble massive, floating rugby balls. Filled with helium or hydrogen, the main body can be either a balloon or a fabric-wrapped metal frame — or something in between — driven by engine-powered propellers and fin-like rudders.
With a half-billion-dollar budget, Flying Whales’ 200-metre-long hybrid-electric helium airship — now in the final design phase — promises a range of 1,000 kilometres. It would burn little fuel, carry 60 tonnes of payload and take off and either land vertically or not at all, instead hovering in the air while winches load and unload cargo like a crane, says the parent company’s chief executive Vincent Guibout.
Heather Exner-Pirot, director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, pointed to melting ice roads and sheer distance as impediments to getting items such as perishable food, septic tanks and housing materials to Canada’s North.
“It’s just very hard to plan and very expensive to implement any kind of construction. You’re talking about a new hospital, a new school, even a new Norad base,” she said.
Lighter-than-air aircraft could offer a convenient halfway point between ocean freighters — round trips between Montreal and Iqaluit can take several weeks — and fast but expensive planes.
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