Sightseeing airship sold to first buyer

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

According to a news release from AVIC, the first AS700 was delivered on Saturday to Guangxi Guilin Fangzhou General Aviation, a private company, at a ceremony in Guilin, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

The Guangxi company will use the airship for low-altitude sightseeing tours.

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

In August, the airship flew through three provincial-level regions on 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 ceremony on Saturday, AVIC received orders for another 12 AS700s from Guangxi Guilin Fangzhou General Aviation and China Comfort Travel Group, according to the conglomerate.

Designed and built by the Special Aircraft Research Institute, an AVIC subsidiary in Jingmen, Hubei province, research and development of the AS700 began in August 2018, primarily to meet the demand for aerial sightseeing 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 km 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 the mid-1980s. However, almost all of them were small 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 runway. Therefore, airships are a good choice for aerial tourism and cargo transportation to remote areas.

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

zhaolei@chinadaily.com.cn