Up, Up and Away

In the spring of 2006, with the ice roads melting far earlier than normal, the Northwest Territories’ two big diamond mines, Diavik and Ekati, were forced to fly the world’s largest commercial helicopter over from Russia in order to help them with their freight. The MI-26, which can lift 22 tonnes at a time, became a frequent sight in the skies over Yellowknife, ferrying almost two dozen separate loads over four weeks to get the job done.

Illustration by Michael Byers

The MI-26 was an expensive solution to a problem that more and more Canadian companies are going to face: how do you get bulky, awkward and heavy freight to remote locations with little or no transportation infrastructure?

Into that breach may yet step the much-mocked but little-understood airship. Alternately referred to as Zeppelins, blimps or dirigibles, they have been around in commercial form for more than 100 years. Although airships are rarely used for freight, there are some people who believe that we’ll soon see them boldly charting – and commercializing – the furthest reaches of Canada. One of those people is Barry Prentice.

The transportation economist and professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba likes to think big, and has been a relentless advocate of dirigibles for the past nine years. He’s optimistic about the prospects of ferrying freight to Canada’s North using what he likes to call buoyant aircraft. “Canada is the best place in the world for the airship industry to start,” he says.

He might have a point. Canada’s north faces structural transportation problems that are among the most daunting in the world. Residents pay many times more for basic goods than Canadians who live closer to the U.S. border. Supply is limited and competition is sparse. Even with food subsidies, two litres of milk will cost you upwards of $8 at the Igloolik Co-op.

The statistics on public health are even more shocking. Sixteen out of every 1,000 births in Nunavut’s Inuit community results in a dead child, the highest rate by far in Canada. Inuit children are nearly 50 per cent less likely than non-Inuit to have seen a doctor in the last twelve months. “From a humanitarian need, or just simple, plain self-interest, we need a transportation solution for the North,” Prentice says.

That self-interest also extends to mining and oil and gas companies that are pushing further into the wilderness in search of increasingly scarce natural resources. Take Imperial Oil Ltd.’s Kearl oil sands project: truck transportation delays on its Korean-made megaloads meant massive cost increases, which will ultimately affect the profitability of the multibillion-dollar project. If you could have dropped a solution into Imperial Oil’s lap that meant it wouldn’t have to shut down highways in Idaho and Oregon, cut down power lines or custom-build massive roadside turnouts, the company would have jumped on it in a heartbeat.

Northern Light: A conceptual rendering of an airship docked at a remote camp

While airships aren’t currently up to the task of moving 300-tonne oil sands modules, the commercial potential associated with them remains enormous. According to Prentice, airships can cruise at about 125 kilometres per hour, which compares well to truck and rail freight speeds. In fact, as he says, the average speed of a rail freight car is typically between 30 and 50 kilometres per hour, and it has stayed that way for the past 100 years.

The newest hybrid models of airships require little infrastructure, and without the cost burden associated with building highways or laying track airships could potentially carry large, awkward or bulky freight at a very competitive price.

Another attractive attribute of the airship is its unparalleled carbon-per-ton-mile performance. According to Prentice, while planes use roughly half of their fuel just to stay aloft, with an airship, the lift is practically free. In a carbon-constrained world, the airship could provide an affordable and green transportation option.

However, with no commercial heavy-lift transport airships currently available, you’ll have to wait before you start flying pallets of food to remote northern worksites. There’s a good reason for the wait, too: nobody’s managed to run an airship operation without crashing it into the ground. Cargolifter AG, a German company, filed for bankruptcy in 2002 after creating a couple of working prototypes. Skyhook, a company that used to be based in Calgary, signed an agreement with the Boeing company in 2008 to develop a freight-hauling airship for the oil patch that used proprietary Boeing rotor technology. But nothing has yet to come from the deal, and Skyhook’s website now redirects to a print shop.

Oh, the humanity!: An artist’s conception of the rigid frame that would give structural integrity to a new breed of airship

While you won’t find a more cheerful advocate for airships than Prentice, he’s also remarkably clear-eyed about why it hasn’t been taken up. “It’s the old joke about the second mouse getting the cheese,” he says. People, investors and companies are reluctant to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to bring a product to market without any guarantee that there will be customers.

Still, Prentice is optimistic, and perhaps for good reason: airships have a new, deep-pocketed friend in the U.S. military. In June of 2010, Northrup Grumman announced a $517-million contract to develop up to three hybrid airships for the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. These are not small research projects.

The long-endurance, multi-intelligence vehicles (LEMVs) are about the size of a football field and will be able to sustain altitudes of 20,000 feet for a three-week period while conducting surveillance. The U.S. wants them as cheaper, longer-term replacements for the unmanned drones that currently provide eyes in the sky over war zones.

The U.S. military’s interest in airships is related to surveillance concerns, but a private civilian company called Hybrid Air Vehicles that Northrup contracted to build these machines is looking to bring them to market in a more accessible way. The modified airships, which could be used to carry cargo rather than spying equipment, would carry on the long tradition of military spending fostering commercial innovation. Without the damn-the-torpedoes spending of the U.S. Department of Defense, we wouldn’t have the night vision goggles, GPS or digital photography.

“There’s no question the U.S. commitment of a half-a-billion dollars for a hybrid aircraft has helped the world look at this technology more seriously,” says Gordon Taylor, the director of marketing for Hybrid Air Vehicles. Based northwest of London, England, the company says it is close to a major announcement in the civilian heavy-lift market and is the farthest along in bringing a viable product to market.

Taylor highlights the differences between Hybrid Air’s designs and those of past airships. While still using lighter-than-air technology, Hybrid Air has incorporated a wing-shaped design, uses vectored thrust for propulsion and employs a hovercraft-style landing system to stay firmly rooted to the ground. These features eliminate the bothersome and time-wasting task of ballasting loads, and remove the need for mooring masts or people on the ground to grab ropes. “You blend all of those technologies and I think you have more of a right to call it a hybrid than Toyota does with their Prius,” says Taylor.

There is even an Alberta connection at play in the world of airships. Kirk Purdy is the executive chairman of the Calgary-based company Aviation Capital Enterprises Inc. (ACE). An engineer by training and a former oilman, he helped form ACE in 2009 for the specific purpose of getting into the airship business. In March 2011, ACE bought the commercial rights for Lockheed Martin’s P-791 hybrid air vehicle, also called the Skytug.

Purdy has a long history as a venture capitalist, which may help explain his attraction to airships. Like any good venture capitalist, he’s interested in hitting the home run – that business proposition that creates massive, category-creating value. “I’m a venture capitalist; I put money into things,” Purdy says. “A couple of years ago, the idea came to me. I put some money into it, I put some talent into it and I wrapped a business plan around it.”

The market may not have recognized the value of his business plan, but he remains enthusiastic about the commercial possibilities for airships in Alberta. “A couple years later, the merits only increased,” he says, “because commodity prices had gone way up and I know that the oil patch is going further, deeper and muckier. The business case is only getting better and better.” Purdy is currently demonstrating prototypes and trying to drum up interest, and he remains patient about the business and its potential. “At some point here, the light bulbs are going to go off, the customer list is going to grow and we’re going to have to build a pretty big company to take advantage of this opportunity.”

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