World’s biggest aircraft is no flight of fancy, as it seeks investors to help give it a lift

It could be the future of aviation, British eccentric genius on a grand scale, or possibly a bit of both.

Secreted in a hangar at Cardington, a few kilometres south of Bedford, sits the world’s largest aircraft: a hybrid of plane, balloon and hovercraft, an airship that the company modestly says will change the world. The Airlander 10 can fly for weeks without stopping, land virtually anywhere that’s flat, and burns just a fifth of the fuel of a conventional aircraft.

With speeds reaching 160km/h, it’s slower than a plane but greener, quieter, and potentially far more direct. Its unusual shape emulates a wing, giving it lift as it is propelled forward by its four engines, as well as from the 38,000 cubic metres of helium that fills its hull.

Hybrid Air Vehicles, the manufacturer, is looking to smaller investors to follow in the footsteps of the US military and Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson by sinking their cash into the dream. Buoyed by the numbers of enquiries from enthusiasts, the firm is set to launch a crowdfunding exercise to match a £3.4 million (HK$39 million) government grant to get the craft off the ground - and eventually build hundreds more to fill the skies.

Airships have been built at Cardington for nearly a century, with mixed results. The two giant green hangars were used to house even bigger craft until the 1930s: the R100 and its doomed sister the R101. Its famous crash virtually ended the British interest in airships, until recent advances in technology made a new iteration possible: a super-tough skin to keep the helium in, a cockpit built from lightweight composite materials, modern controls, and a hull whose unique aerodynamic dimensions were calculated via computer-aided design.

The Airlander was patented in 2001 but development hastened with US backing for a potential long-range spy in the sky. Defence cuts and the winding down of the war in Afghanistan led the US military to abort its US$300million (HK$2.3 billion) programme not long after the craft’s one test flight at the Lakehurst air force base in New Jersey.