READ it in full BELOW, SEE the 5 page spread underneath – or CLICK here to read it online.
Here is some of my other acclaimed writing about airships..
👉 The Smithsonian’s Air and Space Quarterly…The New Age of Tiny Airships
👉 Front cover story: The Smithsonian’s Air and Space Quarterly…Leviathans of the Air
👉 BBC Future…The giant hangar poised for an aviation revolution
On 28 October 2025, the world’s largest aircraft made history when it flew over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge for the first time. Built by Google co-founder, Sergey Brin’s publicity shy LTA Research, Pathfinder-1 airship is the first giant rigid airship built for over 90 years and its flight over San Francisco Bay was its furthest test flight to date. The 400ft-long helium-filled craft is a proof of concept for what, its makers hope, will be a new generation of airships.
The following month many of the 13,000 people who attended Slush, the annual technology and start-up event in Helsinki, Finland took to social media to report a shimmering silver UFO flying over the city – except it was not a UFO. It was a small, semi-rigid airship drone built by Finnish start-up, Kelluu, which now flies probably the largest airship fleet in the world.
Last year, its shipping-container-size airships provided surveillance data to NATO’s multinational air combat exercise, Atlantic Trident 25, which took place in Finland during the summer.
Following the catastrophic crash of the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg in 1937, airships largely faded into obscurity. Cyclical bouts of enthusiasm for lighter-than-air flight left little behind other than computer-generated imagery and failed projects, such as CargoLifter.
Now with innovative new craft flying over cities, such as San Francisco and Helsinki, there is a real sense of optimism that the airship industry can be rebuilt and this time a new generation of airships will return lighter-than-air flight to the heart of the wider aviation industry – but is the airship really back?
“It is iconic to see an airship of that size over the Golden Gate Bridge,” says Alan Shrimpton, Council member of The Airship Association and Editor of the AIRSHIP Journal, “and that has got to help the lighter-than-air sector. Whatever Sergey Brin wants to do with his airships, it is saying to the rest of the world, look, you can build these things, they do fly, and they have got all these capabilities. They are very important test flights. Five years ago press coverage was all speculative and about the big airships. Now every time we see images and stories about Kelluu commercial airship drones it is a great plus for the lighter-than-air industry.”
However, analyst Barry Prentice, director of the University of Manitoba Transport Institute (UMTI), is more cautious. “Confidence is an issue,” he says. “Supply and demand have not met for at least 90 years. On one side, the people who would like to use airships are not sure whether they will work, and on the other, there are people who might like to invest in airships – and their question is, well, is there a market if we invest all this money?”
Pathfinder
Google co-founder, Sergey Brin’s LTA Research flew its Pathfinder-1 airship over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in October 2025. (LTA Research)
The lack of publicity around Pathfinder’s flights and likely customers belies LTA’s significant progress. The last giant rigid airship, Graf Zeppelin II, flew in August 1939 and was scrapped the following year. In November 2023 LTA’s Pathfinder 1 emerged from historic Hangar Two at Moffett Airfield, California, remaining on or near the ground until May 2025, when it made the first giant rigid airship flight in 96 years. Five months later it successfully completed the three-and-a-half-hour journey to San Francisco.
“As we expand our testing over the San Francisco Bay Area, we are meticulously validating the safety and reliability of modern lighter-than-air technology,” says CEO, Brett Crozier. “With each completed manoeuvre, we are proving the capabilities of Pathfinder 1 and defining what is possible for the future of aviation.”
Thanks to the Google co-founder’s deep pockets, LTA Research has had the time to get decisions right that others have not always had. It now has facilities in California, Nevada and Ohio, the home of the US airship industry and the centre of polymer research – and has purchased the historic Akron Airdock, where LTA Research expects to “continue development of the Pathfinder series.” The company has also built a close relationship with Goodyear blimps based in nearby Wingfoot.
Lightweight carbon fibre and titanium replace the weaker aluminium alloys of the 1930s; cotton composites and cow-gut fabrics make way for flame-retardant synthetics; twelve electric motors line the sides of the airship; and Lidar sensors constantly monitor the helium in the gas cells.
Flying Whales
Flying Whales’ LCA60T is being developed in collaboration with the French National Forest Agency. (Flying Whales)
In July 2025, France’s Flying Whales Services signed a ‘binding contract’ with the French National Forest Agency for the lease of four to six of its huge LCA60T rigid airships. Founded by Sébastien Bougon in 2012, Flying Whales has taken a different approach to building its next-generation airship than its American cousin. The concept of the company’s heavy-lift airship – which will be twice as long as LTA’s giant – was born in France’s public sector. When the Forest Agency needed to transport logs out of remote regions of France it turned to a radical idea: an airship.
Now the company has raised around $190m over three fundraising rounds – and is currently on its fourth one – and with potential customers for an airship that can transport 60t of cargo in or suspended beneath its hold, with the top 10% representing demand for about 30 airships a year.
Backed by the French government, the region of Nouvelle‑Aquitaine and the government of Quebec, Flying Whales appears to have overcome any early scepticism over its project and forged an industrial consortium of about 50 companies – including Dassault and Safran – to build its airship. “The fact that the French government is a shareholder has helped the certification process,” says Tanguy Lestienne, CEO of Flying Whales, who adds that he is in regular communication with LTA Research CEO, Brett Crozier.
Instead of selling airships, the company plans to lease them. Production will take place in France, Quebec and, potentially, Australia. Construction of three massive production hangars at Laruscade, near Bordeaux, is expected to begin in early 2026 after a lengthy environmental approval process.
Unlike its rivals, Flying Whales has decided not to build a technology demonstrator for the LCA60T. Instead, if work begins on the site early in 2026, then it expects construction of the first airship to begin in 2027 and a first flight by the start of 2028. “It is an ambitious timeline, but it is the DNA of the project,” says Lestienne.
Airlander
Hybrid Air Vehicles will build its Airlander 10 airship near Doncaster and recently signed an agreement with ZeroAvia to develop hydrogen powertrains. (Hybrid Air Vehicles)
The future of lighter-than-air travel was at one time expected to be in hybrid airships, offering a cheaper, easier-to-operate alternative to traditional rigid airships. Yet more than three and a half years after Spanish airline, Air Nostrum reserved 20 Airlander 10s from UK company, Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), work has still not begun at the planned 20-acre site on Carcroft Common, near Doncaster. The first flight is now expected in 2028, with certification and delivery following later. “We’re doing something really big and quite unusual,” says Tom Grundy, CEO of HAV. “Airlander 10 is an absolute gamechanger. There aren’t many aircraft that will remove as much as 90% of operating emissions at introduction. That’s a really big thing.”
HAV remains the only firm to have flown a large, full-scale hybrid prototype, the Airlander having emerged from an abandoned US military surveillance project. It now claims to have roughly £2.2bn in reservations, dominated by civilian orders, with a further £7bn pipeline split between civilian and military interests. It has invested around £140m in development, gained CAA design and production approvals, and continues to draw in partners, such as ZeroAvia to develop hydrogen powertrains. HAV plans to mass-manufacture Airlanders from the outset, aiming for 24 aircraft a year at Carcroft Common with the backing of the new South Yorkshire Combined Authority.
A recent study found that Airlanders carrying ten-tonne loads could land at seven remote Scottish airfields, where Islanders and Twin Otters currently land, with minimal changes required and 90% dispatch reliability. “Every aerospace project takes time in the pre-launch phase,” Grundy says, “but it’s a worthwhile goal.”
AT² Aerospace
AT² Aerospace was spun out of Lockheed Martin in 2023 and plans to commercialise hybrid airship technology that dates back to the 1990s. (AT² Aerospace)
Los Angeles-based AT² Aerospace finds itself in a similar position. Spun out of defence giant, Lockheed Martin in 2023, it is seeking to commercialise the hybrid airship technology that lighter-than-air pioneer, Dr Robert Boyd, worked on at Lockheed’s famed Skunk Works from the 1990s.
In 2006, Lockheed test-flew P-791, the world’s first successful hybrid airship. In 2015 Lockheed’s LMH-1, offering a payload load of 20t, was unveiled at the Paris Air Show.
The failure of this design to attract large enough orders led to the spin-out of AT² Aerospace and its Z-1 hybrid airship.
Since then, AT² has received orders for the Z-1, including a $50m launch order from Britain’s Straightline Aviation, which it plans to construct at a new facility in North Carolina. Yet, according to Boyd, the challenge for the spinout is that orders like these appear to be not enough to attract the investment needed to begin production. However, it appears to be struggling to attract sufficient investment to begin production.
“We’re cargo-focused,” says Boyd. “Our first product is aimed at transporting cargo to mines, drilling sites and remote communities that have no infrastructure. It’s about delivering hundreds of tonnes of cargo a week, if not millions of tonnes a year. However, the people who want to buy a service do not want to invest in product. They can write us a nice letter that says if this existed, we would use it – but that has little impact on the financial people, who ask, why won’t they write a contract?”
“AT2 Aerospace knows the sweet spot of its aircraft and has plenty of opportunity in the Canadian Far North to go for,” says Shrimpton.
“The roads are disappearing and airships will be the only cost-effective ways of getting heavy goods up into these remote communities.”
“HAV has got a handle on something that’s really quite interesting,” he continues. “It is quite a capable vehicle and is targeting a middle-range set of applications. If HAV can get the vehicle built, I think there are a lot of commercial opportunities for it. The problem is that in this economy the money people are not prepared to invest at this stage and it is holding everything back.”
Russian efforts
As in the US and Western Europe, there is also a lack of suitable sites to build airships and the bureaucracy during aircraft certification is complex. (Flying Whales)
Similar challenges exist for Russia’s airship companies. The nation’s role as a centre of lighter-than-air flight and innovation began in the 19th Century and, in the 1930s, the Soviet government launched a programme of airship construction to create a network of airship routes criss-crossing the country.
Today the likes of the Spets Radio Company, the Airship Initiative Design Bureau Aerosmena (AIDBA) and Aeronova (SolarGroup) – which has built a technology demonstrator called NOVA-01 – are seeking investment to build a variety of airship concepts.
“The main problem is potential customers who are interested in operating an airship [but] say, ‘You build the airship, and we’ll buy it,’” says Sergei Bendin, industry analyst and CEO at the Aerosmena airship project. “Plus the lack of government funding and reliable investors…and international sanctions.”
As in the US and Western Europe, there is also a lack of suitable sites to build airships and the bureaucracy during aircraft certification is complex. “In Russia, promoting such innovative projects without government support… is virtually impossible,” adds Bendin.
Kelluu
Finland’s Kelluu uncrewed airships have been patrolling the skies over Scandinavia for 12 hours at a time. (Kelluu)
Due to the laws of physics, airships have tended to be large (and expensive). Smaller, less expensive, manufacturable airships have long been difficult to build – until now.
Founded in 2018 with the goal of revolutionising aerial monitoring, Kelluu has shown how technological innovation has made small, autonomous, long-endurance, hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered airships possible. Now the Russian invasion of Ukraine has accelerated their wider adoption with Kelluu airships operating over more than 100,000km2 of Finland and Sweden, staying aloft for up to 12 hours at a time.
In December 2024, Kelluu was selected for NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator (DIANA), which promotes dual-use advances in science and engineering. It completed its fifth NATO deployment in 2025 has received a persistent aerial autonomy award from NATO’s Allied Land Command.
“Everything changed when Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022,” says Janne Hietala, co-founder and CEO of Kelluu, “with hybrid threats facing NATO and Russia’s GPS jamming covering a large chunk of Finland. Our capability is unique in adding complementary scale, coverage and availability to larger, more expensive unmanned systems.”
Kelluu’s use of hydrogen as a lifting gas means its lighter-than-air drones require little power to remain airborne, and they can stay aloft significantly longer than conventional drones. They are also quieter and more stable, making them ideal for covert surveillance. Their soft envelope and low mass also reduce risk in civilian airspace.
Kelluu is now developing its second-generation drone, which will be faster and more powerful, as well as being designed for mass manufacture. Hietala believes that 500 Kelluu Gen-Two airships across Europe and another 3,500 in the Americas will deliver a persistent aerial monitoring network operating beneath the clouds, like Starlink, but cheaper and autonomous.
For Shrimpton the big change in the lighter-than-air industry is the development of these small commercial airship drones. “They are flying, finding new markets, and making money for their companies,” he says.
However, Barry Prentice believes the challenges many of these airship companies face continue to be significant. “There are huge barriers to entry,” he says. “If you think about the need to have a building bigger than the airship to build an airship, then that’s an expensive piece of infrastructure, and there’s very few of those existing. Then, on top of that, you can’t just produce an airship, staff it and start to make money. It takes years to get these things certified, and at huge cost, and it’s not uncommon to have to build three aircraft before they can get certified – and how many investors have the stomach for all this? The lack of government commitment isn’t helping confidence levels either.”
Looking to China
Developed by the AVIC’s Special Vehicle Research Institute, the AS700 is a single-capsule airship designed to carry up to ten people, including a pilot. It has a range of 430 miles and can remain airborne for up to ten hours. (AVIC)
The future of the lighter-than-air airship may ultimately be in China. Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) was an investor in Flying Whales. The same company has developed the first Chinese airship, AS700 Xiangyun, a new electric blimp for tourism which – according to reports – has now received the first production certificate for a domestically produced manned airship. The first Xiangyun has already been delivered.
“China is happy to publish the videos, but its overall intention is not clear,” says Shrimpton. “What we have seen is quite a conventional airship, unless they are just using it as a test bed for new engines or hydrogen fuel technologies.”
It may be wise not to take developments like this at face value. “It is not clear where Chinese corporations stop and the government begins,” says Prentice. “I think the Chinese may be the ones who will move this thing forward faster because if they want to do it, they will do it.” Indeed, one goal of the AS700 project appears is to build a complete crewed airship ecosystem in China, stretching from R&D, to manufacture, and flight operations.
In the meantime, Pathfinder 1 test flights will continue and LTA Research will take its time to get it right. “As the most advanced electric airship ever built and flown, Pathfinder 1 is poised to shape the future of airship aviation,” says Brett Crozier. However, Kelluu – and other companies like it building drones to operate at low altitudes and in the stratosphere – are set to enter more markets with their small equally innovative airship drones. The airship is back, but this time as a drone.
