Have you ever thought of enjoying the skies and the water both “at the same time”? Yes! At the same time. At least I hadn’t thought about this and had no idea that it will become a reality. If we sit back for a while and ponder how far this world has come in terms of technological advancements then we can’t figure it out in numbers. Our minds will be blown away and our heart might stop pumping the blood. So, coming back from where we left; another wondrous invention has just been disclosed. We are talking about “Air Yacht”, a combination of an airship and a yacht. Sounds astonishing, right?
Aviation enthusiasts must have heard about the “Zeppelins” which was an airship, introduced by Germans, lighter than air, and was able to cruise in the air for a sufficient amount of time. Air Yacht is built on this concept as well but with considerable and enormous modifications. Although it has a similar structure to some extent to Zeppelin its built-in technologies and functions are different. Before coming to its composition, it is a luxury aircraft as well as watercraft and cannot be used by the general public, only for VIPs. As per its specifications, it is 52 m long, 13 m wide and 11m high and can incorporate up to 15 persons on board including 12 passengers and 3 crew members. As you can see in the picture below, its design and layout are luxurious and grandiose and has very vast spaces in different sections for the passengers to relax, enjoy their meals and take a breathtakingly amazing view. It has almost five to six cabins and the facility of swimming pool for the passengers as well. You will be amazed to find out that it has a separate cabin where cars, jet skis, or tender boats can be accompanied. This facility is surely built for such VIP passengers who would like to take their belongings with them and enjoy their accompanied cars once they reach their dream destination. Also, it may operate on itself for a period of one week without any external assistance like fuel or maintenance.
However, it has not revealed its pricing yet because it is expected to be operational by 2026. “Pricing will only be addressed with potential purchasers during a discreet interview”, according to Ozanne. “Those who are interested might get in touch with the firm through its website”.
Coming towards its functional capability, so it is designed on a helium-air principle. As the name suggests, it consists of two parts- a helium-filled airship that is lighter than air and is inflammable and a yacht attached underneath it. If the passengers demand to travel at sea, then the pilot releases the Yacht from the lower side with the help of attached cables and then decouples the cables once it touched down the surface of the water. The same thing happened when going from sea to air but in a reverse manner, that the pilot engages cables and couples the yacht with them to be airborne again. The whole technique uses the “air buoyancy” system which controls the engaging and disengaging movements of the cable as well as balancing the weight and direction of the Air Yacht when transferring the modes of traveling. This is unquestionably an amazing discovery.
