Leading Chinese aircraft maker delivers new civilian airship

Aviation Industry Corp of China, the nation's leading aircraft maker has begun to deliver the AS700 multipurpose civilian airship to its first user, who will use the blimp for aerial sightseeing.

According to a news release from AVIC, the first AS700 was delivered to Guangxi Guilin Fangzhou General Aviation, a private company, at a ceremony in Guilin, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, on Saturday, marking the beginning of the airship model's commercial operation.

The Guangxi company will deploy the airship to carry out low-altitude sightseeing tours.

Before the delivery, the first AS700 had undergone a 15-day trial run involving tens of flights, during which designers examined its safety and reliability performance, said the release.

In August, the blimp flew through three provincial-level regions in a 13-hour demonstration tour, marking the longest flight—both in terms of distance and duration—ever completed by any domestically built manned airship in China.

At the Saturday ceremony, AVIC received orders for another 12 AS700s from Guangxi Guilin Fangzhou General Aviation and China Comfort Travel Group, according to the aircraft conglomerate.

Designed and built by the Special Aircraft Research Institute, an AVIC subsidiary in Jingmen, Hubei province, the AS700's research and development began in August 2018, primarily to meet the demand for sightseeing air tours.

Propelled by piston engines, the airship has a maximum takeoff weight of 4.15 metric tons, a maximum speed of 100 kilometers per hour, and a flight ceiling of 3.1 km. It can carry one pilot and nine tourists and is capable of flying 700 kilometers and staying in the air for up to 10 hours.

After intensive test flights, the AS700 received its type certificate from the Civil Aviation Administration of China in December, becoming the first manned airship in the country to be domestically certified.

Before the AS700, the Jingmen institute had designed a number of manned and unmanned airships since mid-1980s. However, almost all of them are small-sized models used to carry scientific equipment to perform experiments or technology demonstration rather than for tourism purposes.

According to industry experts, compared with conventional aircraft like fixed-wing planes or helicopters, airships have much lower costs in terms of procurement, operation and maintenance. They can be used almost everywhere, as opposed to fixed-wing planes that require a large airport. Therefore, airships are a good choice for aerial tourism and cargo transportation to remote, poorly conditioned areas.

In addition to aerial tourism, the AS700 is also suitable for a wide range of civilian operations such as mineral prospecting, marine surveillance, police patrol, cargo transport, and emergency rescue, according to Zhou Lei, its chief designer.