Wow, this technology is quite fascinating!
It's possible that they might consider updating it to a more established version with greater capacity, which has been known and is operating since 1961.
Yes, this is the craft, the Regent Viceroy sea glider: 12+2 crew, 3500 lbs payload, up to 156 nm range, 156 kt. It can fly an hour, might be okay for island hopping.
When I go to the web sites of some of their "customers", there's no mention of this thing.
Regent's own site says "Seagliders have 160 nautical mile range with existing battery technology (upgradeable to over 400 nautical mile range with next generation battery technology) and will enter service by 2025. Full-scale prototypes will begin human flight trials by 2024. Specifications and configuration are subject to change, images may not reflect the final vehicle design."
I wonder what new battery technology they plan to use that they think will provide a 250% range increase. The 180mph top speed is impressive, but you're not going to be able to operate at that speed around other sea traffic.
You need just the right situation for this thing - docks not too far apart, but far enough apart that an ordinary ferry is too slow. An area with so little sea traffic that it can go full speed. Long Beach to Catalina Island is out; you can't zip these things across a major shipping lane full of container ships. Wall Street to the Hamptons has the same problem. Not sure about inter-island in Hawaii.
Probably more useful in areas with lots of small populated islands. East Asia, maybe.
This thing is certainly buildable, but it seems to be more in the private jet category than a major transportation system.
I know it's possibly vapour but I wish they build the craft and find a market for it to make it commercially viable. I was thinking Hawaii, Canary Islands, Azores, Balearic Islands, crossing between Sardinia and Corsica and from around Messina Sicily to mainland Italy, Japan, South Korea (eg. Wando-Jeju), NZ (eg. Wellington area to Waikawa or Picton). You don't need shipping port or ferry infrastructure for it, a smaller port or a marina with good acces to electricity might be enough. For the rest of SE Asia it might be too expensive, but it might be useful in the Philippines and Indonesia.
The investments are real, but at least some of them might be more about the optics of investing in zero emissions planes rather than actually expecting these to enter service
> The 180mph top speed is impressive, but you're not going to be able to operate at that speed around other sea traffic.
> you can't zip these things across a major shipping lane full of container ships.
Why not? At the speed this thing is flying the container ships are almost stationary. If we take the Long Beach to Catalina Island example the flight time would be on the order of 10 minutes. If you take the full speed of a container ship they can travel around 5 miles under that. If you plot a course which avoids them by that much they can't jump in front of the plane even if they try.
This is where EVTOLs should have more prevalence in testing low-altitude runs, like 10s of feet, not 100s, where safety can be increased. Also regulation might be different for very low altitude flights.
> A preliminary survey of Hawai‘i residents showed they are concerned that seagliders will only be affordable to the affluent and may result in an increased tax burden on Hawai‘i’s residents. The survey also showed that residents are concerned that seagliders may produce some form of ecological damage either near shore or in the areas surrounding the harbors. Others expressed their concern about how seagliders can potentially impact communities through an increase in visitors. All of these concerns are important to the Hawai‘i Seaglider Initiative, and will be addressed as seagliders move forward in Hawai‘i. We believe seagliders should bring the community together, not divide us. The goal of the Hawai‘i Seaglider Initiative is to move forward with an open heart and mind as a unified community.
so all the concerns are accurate and nothing will be done to create a different reality. understandable. cant wait to visit!
Wrong kind of environmental concerns from what locals have told me. The issues were more about increased traffic from Oahu to the less populated islands and people taking things that have been made more or less extinct on Oahu like opihi or the lava rocks used for cooking kalua pig.
The GP's post tracks with my recollection from the time. On the return leg of one of the very first trips to Maui three pickup trucks were found with beds full of lava rock, allegedly collected without permission or permits. This was the inciting incident that seemed to confirm the neighbor islands' residents fears that the Superferry would lead to plundering of cultural resources en masse (not to mention making existing overcrowding worse). On a subsequent trip to kauai a large number of protestors (or protectors I suppose, depending on your view) paddled out on surfboards and blocked the ferry's path at Nawiliwili.
The rocks weren't the direct cause of the Superferry shutting down, but in my recollection they sure charted the course that way: people who might have seemed to some like they were just fighting change to fight change suddenly had irrefutable evidence to confirm their fears. There were of course other legal challenges that actually led to the shutdown, bankruptcy, and subsequent abandonment of the vessels. But at the time, on the neighbor islands, it sure crystalized the opposition.
> The Hawaii Superferry started service in 2007 but only lasted until 2009 after the state Supreme Court ruled that a law allowing it to operate without a second complete environmental study was unconstitutional.
A lot of the outer island folks loved it. I did. I lived on Maui at the time.
So then the question becomes: does a theoretical "boat with electric motor" succeed more or less with energy efficiency. I say theoretical, but I feel like you could take any ferry and replace the motor with an electric one? Maybe that's not true.
its a ground effect plane - they can be a bit more efficient vs traditional ferries and airplanes especially in a role were it just relatively short hops between islands.
Also since its effectively float-able by design it has the potential to be very safe even if its propulsion breaks during the trip. you could just send another plane to take the passengers off then take the broken plane home pulled by a ship. This capability should be designed in.
The limited trip length might even lend itself to concepts that are fully or partially battery powered.
one downside is that the plane might not be able to be used in rougher weather.
Can a ground effect plane really be more efficient than a ferry or a hyperfoil? It just seems like a boat that can carry cargo etc would be useful infrastructure instead of a fast taxi service. Pour que no los dos perhaps...
To be clear, what I read about the ferry service being shut down made it sound like Hawaii has some dysfunction preventing good and normal things from happening, just sounds like this would be less feasible
Efficiency is not the only metric here. Water has a lot of friction. That's why boats are relatively slow and use a lot of fuel or electricity. A ferry with hundreds of miles range would need a huge battery. With distances between islands being tens to hundreds of miles (depending on the route), the speed also matters. For cargo that matters less obviously.
This thing is electric and flies over the water. So it uses way less power per mile than if it was a boat in the water. And likewise because it flies in ground effect, it has an advantage over electrical planes as well. Hydrofoils might be close enough but still use more power and are probably also a lot slower.
The cost of the electricity is less of a concern here since electricity is cheap. The main efficiency related concern is the impact it has on range as batteries are expensive and heavy. Distances in Hawaii are not enormous but long enough that you'd have to worry about this. So, given that this thing has the needed range, it should be quite attractive as an alternative to planes. Cheaper and cleaner to operate (presumably) and quick enough that the difference doesn't matter. And a lot faster than ferries or hydrofoils.
The superferry was canned because of lobbying by airlines and car rental companies.
Currently, the only way to travel between the islands is by actual airplanes, through airports, with all the annoyances that comes with that, TSA, security, bag checks, prohibited items, and a gazillion other rules. That's what this thing will compete against, and it's pretty much a slam dunk.
Unless it will be lobbied to death like the predecessors.
As with many ferries, the Superferry could let you bring your vehicle with you on the trip. The rental car companies would care because that would reduce their business as many locations in Hawaii are best accessible via private vehicle.
Though aside from Honolulu (I assume, haven't been there specifically), most of the airports in Hawaii are pretty small, laid-back affairs. They're really not a big deal to fly in and out of.
There were also a lot of environmental protests against the Superferry that I doubt can all be chalked up to car rental and airline lobbying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_Superferry
TSA afaik isn't even required for intrastate flights as intrastate travel isn't fed jurisdiction. In Alaska they don't even metal detect for weapons intrastate last time I flew.
If they're keeping TSA for intrastate flightd it's just as a fed funded voluntary jobs program for low IQ undereducated people to not have to rely on state welfare .
Your elitist commentary aside. The issue is probably more that at small Hawaii airports that have both service back to the mainland and inter-island flights, they just don't bother to separate the two pools of passengers.
I have done an inter-island flight from smaller small prop plane terminal in Kona adjacent to the main (but still small) terminal and I'm guessing I didn't have a security screening in that case.
I lived there right as the superferry got announced/released. Then in the same time span, almost overnight, it was shut down. Absolutely insane. It was a great solution.
The fact that you could bring your car to another island was epic. These planes cannot do that.
This is so cool, I hope they try to coral a diverse collection of local stakeholders because these things in hawaii tend to die by the hand of protestors who are a very vocal minority.
Neat! I couldn't see where they intend to run it (though it may be hidden in an article). They give a 300km range, which is almost exactly Christchurch–Wellington, so I wonder if that's possible.
"Ocean Flyer’s seagliders would be able to fly people between Wellington and Lyttelton in an hour for $60 a seat, or between Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour and Whangarei in 30 minutes for $30, Aslam forecast."
Christchurch to Wellington is a bit of a stretch for the range.
It's too far to use the Harbour infrastructure at either end. You would have to build a pier on the southern side of Wellington (say Island Bay) and then use New Brighton pier. That works out to about 295 km.
With only 300km range, it's hard to find good routes in NZ.
Well, they only need slightly more range. 300km isn't really enough, but 350km is plenty.
From what I can tell, the design is still in development. The 300km number is probably more of a conservative estimate than an actual range. The Ocean Flyer team might be gambling on the real-world range being long enough for the Christchurch-Wellington route.
Considering Cook Strait is one of the most dangerous and unpredictable waters in the world - I think I'll pass on flying through it! I've had some dodgy passages through the Wellington harbour entrance - as much as this should fly above it, I'd be feeling rather nervous.
That said, given how much the current ferry has issues - maybe this is just as safe.
It's an ekranoplan. The USSR made several.
The actual vehicle is from a company called Regent.[1] They do have a quarter-scale prototype, and a video. This web site is from some group trying to get funding for a service.
The current Regent ekranoplan, not yet shipping, is a 12 passenger model. That seems small for an inter-island ferry. It would be faster than a ferry, but since the existing inter-island ferry routes only run about an hour, more speed may not be worth the trouble.
The Ekranoplan, or so-called Caspian Sea Monster, was truly massive, and could no doubt fit several of these puny tourist versions in its hold. For these kind of endeavours you'd really want to go big or home - there's a limited enough tourist market if all you're planning to transport is some sightseers without any luggage!
Something that could take a few shipping containers, automobiles, passengers etc. however, you'd think there would be a greater demand for something like that.
> The Ekranoplan, or so-called Caspian Sea Monster, was truly massive,
Ekranoplan is a class of vehicles; the "Caspian Sea Monster" was an individual experimental ekranoplan (the Lun-class was a later large combat ekranoplan, with a short career.)
> For these kind of endeavours you'd really want to go big or home
I don't know, I think for commercial ventures without bottomless military funding backing, starting small makes sense, there's lots of places small tourist ekranoplans could find a market.
Interesting. That's only the very short trip between Maui and Lanai though. Still an improvement over the zero ferries that existed back when I lived there.
I'm not sure where you're getting this. There are no inter-island ferries anymore in Hawaii, except for the short tourist hops from Maui to Lanai and Molokai. Much longer trips between the big island, Maui and Oahu were possible for a couple years up until 2009 on the Superferry, but it closed after years of legal wrangling over environmental issues.
Not sure why the Boeing 929 was a failure in so many places, but you can still ride them in Japan and Hong Kong. The experience is fun --they are fast, security is light and the vessels are retro-futuristic. I rode one from Tokyo to Izu-Oshima and it was 1:45 vs 6:00 for the normal ferry.
Yes and no. One the one hand, absolutely a tourist attraction. Its projected to be cheaper than flying, and hopes to be a lot less hassle. (Expect pushback from the airlines. )
However small capacity, cheap, accessible transport is a boon for islanders living in archipelago. For starters you're not bound to islands big enough for an airport.
Given that the vehicle is electric, and hawaii has abundant solar energy, it could end up being very cost effective.
So what starts small, and touristy, might end up being mainstream and useful in lots of similar (ie island) contexts.
On the environmental front I expect the usual "complain about anything new" crowd, coupled with push-back from existing operators. But it's hard to see how this does more environmental harm than planes or boats.
Yes, a ground-effect vehicle has better wing efficiency than an aircraft. However, it has disadvantages, like how it handles waves. A flying boat, for example, only needs to worry about the waves at the departure and arrival locations, which may be in a protected harbor or channel, while a GEV must deal with larger waves between the islands.
> On the environmental front I expect the usual "complain about anything new" crowd
Thing is, this isn't new. Ground effect vehicles have been around for decades, the technology is pretty mature, and the problems also pretty well known. If someone cracks that nut - great! - but a lot of people have tried and failed to extend its use outside of some niche areas. That history of failure tends to dampen enthusiasm.
> But it's hard to see how this does more environmental harm than planes or boats.
That calculation is not easy. If you want to minimize environmental harm the most, switch to sailboat. Cook used no fossil fuels to travel to and around Hawaii, and neither did the Polynesians who discovered the place.
If you want to minimize CO2 emissions, ban all inter-island flights and switch to ferries - https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint says ferries emit about 1/7th of the CO2 as short-haul flights.
>> The competition for that space is seaplanes, including both floatplanes and flying boats
Airplanes operate in a hostel environment where the penalty for failure is severe. The translates into a lot of (good) regulation which makes planes expensive to make, and expensive to maintain.
Ground effect vehicles are more in the car/boat space when it comes to mechanical failure. Sure I'm not saying it can be made of some wire and duct tape, but the necessary mechanical standard is a -lot- lower (ie cheaper.)
>> . If you want to minimize environmental harm
Sure. Or stay home. There's always something better. But that wasn't the hypothesis. The statement was that its better than planes or (motor) boats.
Frankly, if an electric craft is charged from solar or wind, its already as good as a sailboat.
> which makes planes expensive to make, and expensive to maintain
Understood. Though as the comparison link mentions, there's another important cost - "limited utility has kept production levels low enough that it has been impossible to amortize development costs sufficiently to make GEVs competitive with conventional aircraft".
I don't pretend to have more than a surface knowledge about topic, but when the idea has been around decades, developed and promoted for decades, and is still only a niche mode of travel (along with hovercraft, hydrofoil, and flying boats), that tells me the doubts aren't simply from those who "complain about anything new".
> The statement was that its better than planes or (motor) boats.
Sure. My comment was to point out how complicated the full calculation was, because it should include the electric ferries that becoming available, and not limit itself to motor boats.
> Ground effect vehicles are more in the car/boat space when it comes to mechanical failure.
Not quite. This thing depends on dynamic stability. If a wingtip touches the water at speed, it will probably flip. It has to turn without banking. So it has many of the stability and control problems of an aircraft at landing, plus some of the wave problems of a seaplane. It's not like a big, wide hovercraft, where, if you lose power, you just settle down into boat mode.
The airlines are the ones already investing and planning on operating these, first as an alternative to their Cessnas and other <30 seat commuter planes. The real question is whether these actually materialize or if Regent goes the way of basically every previous aviation startup.
Certainly claiming these could be in service next year is a tad over optimistic.
No, this is a combination ekranoplan and hydrofoil. I think whether it's classified as the "world's first" is going to depend on what counts as operational, but it's certainly much less common than ekranoplans.
As an aside, rctestflight over on YouTube has made a number of attempts[1] at making a good RC ground-effect vehicle. Due to physics this is a lot harder for smaller vehicles.
The USSR one in your link isn't even the craziest ekranoplan :) This one was huge and used 8 jet engines: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan . It looks to me like a failed Kerbal Space Program experiment (moah engines!) but curiously enough it was in actual operational service.
The one in the link actually looks fairly sane, it's smaller and powered by only 1 turboprop by the looks of it (edit: nope it has 2 turbofans in the nose too). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-90_Orlyonok
Edit: oops I see it was already mentioned sorry. I was reading on mobile.
> but since the existing inter-island ferry routes only run about an hour, more speed may not be worth the trouble
What inter-island ferry routes? There aren’t any, and when there were many of the routes were muuuuuch longer than an hour. The I harbored portion of the island chain is almost 300 miles long - a trip from Hilo to Honolulu would be ~240 miles.
The small size is actually the point? One of the big problems with the Superferry was the places the ferry went, didn't want to have a bunch of people showing up at once cheaply for... NIMBY reasons.
Doesn't this not apply in Hawaii, since there's a state law (or multiple laws) that effectively forbid ferries between the islands? IIRC it was to avoid environmental cross-contamination.
> Ferry operations were suspended in March 2009 after the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that a state law allowing the Superferry to operate without a second complete environmental impact statement was unconstitutional.[2] The company went bankrupt as a result of these actions preventing service in Hawaii.[3] On July 2, 2009 a Delaware Bankruptcy Court granted the company's motion to abandon both the ships Alakai and Huakai, ending all possibilities that the company might return to Hawaii;[4] the ships were bought by the US Maritime Administration in 2010.[5] The United States Navy eventually purchased the craft for a total of $35M, a small fraction of their original $180M cost.[6]
There was great demand but crowds of eco-protesters would block the landing and prevented all operation, so they saw no revenue for many quarters. Pretty soon there was no money left to continue operations, let alone deal with the lawsuits and regulatory pile-ons. The state went back to being reliant on airlines and big shipping vessels (which are more polluting).
I can definitely see the big negative impact on transportation of goods to/from Hawaii as a result of that law, as foreign ships can't stop at Hawaii to offload (and or pickup) goods and then continue on to the continental US.
But I'm not seeing why it would be bad for a local ferry. The sailors operating the ferry are going to be living on the islands, so requiring them to be legal permanent residents doesn't seem too onerous. And these don't have enough range to be traveling to foreign islands so that complication doesn't apply.
Ah that makes sense, I had overlooked the manufacturing requirements. Especially for a new type of ship that could certainly impact economies of scale. Thanks!
What happens if the hydrofoil hits a large dolphin, shark, whale or other large sea creature?
Sea animals collide with motor boats occasionally but this Seaglider would be even more likely to do so because:
- It doesn't produce as much underwater noise as a motor which would normally serve to alarm sea animals.
- It goes a lot faster, giving sea animals less time to react.
Then there is the concern about what a collision would cause to the Seaglider itself if the hydrofoil broke off or worse, didn't break off and caused the Seaglider to plunge, nose first, into the ocean.
The other thing to be concerned about are sub-surface rocks. If a boat goes over a rock that's hidden just below the surface, it can badly damage the boat and motor and can cause death, but again, the faster you go, the more damage can be done.
My point is that the lower risk for the majority of the journey will offset (partially or fully I do not know) the increased risk on take-off and landing. I would guess that the overall risk will end up lower for a WIG craft than a traditional high speed foiling vessel.
Also rocks are only a concern in a small area of ocean around the takeoff and landing areas, which will presumably be fairly well surveyed.
The aerodynamic benefit of flying in ground effect is fairly small, and the disadvantage is that rogue waves can just randomly splash that high.
The current plane's wingspan is 65 feet, which probably means it flies about 32 feet (half a wingspan) off the water. Rogue waves can easily be that high in mild weather, and hitting even a small amount of water at 200 mph (claimed cruise speed) is bad.
Lots of sea birds too, presumably, at that altitude.
Watching that demo video was terrifying to me. The water is unpredictable and this thing wants to be close to it at full speed. It would have to be perfect conditions to get me into one of those.
> The aerodynamic benefit of flying in ground effect is fairly small
It's small compared to regular flight, but it's far more efficient than a regular boat hull pushing the water. A lot of that efficiency is achieved in hydrofoil mode, but lifting into ground effect mode should be even more efficient than hydrofoil (albeit as you say at some loss of stability).
There are already several electric hydrofoil pleasure boats available that have remarkable range, i.e. Navier and Candela.
>The aerodynamic benefit of flying in ground effect is
the certification of the craft as a ship instead of a plane. I think it'd be very easy to build today a flying boat like the ones from 30s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_314_Clipper), yet certification cost of it makes it unfeasible as a business endeavor.
In general, if I remember correctly, the cheap inter-island transportation isn't really wanted there as it is expected to bring homeless/etc. to the otherwise affluent islands.
> In general, if I remember correctly, the cheap inter-island transportation isn't really wanted there as it is expected to bring homeless/etc. to the otherwise affluent islands.
There’s already dirt cheap inter-island transport, it’s just slow. A homeless guy doesn’t care if the ferry takes 2 hours instead of 30 minutes when the ticket is $40.
It ceased operations a decade ago. For environmental reasons officially, and unofficially exactly because it was cheap inter-island transport for homeless and the likes.
>There’s already dirt cheap inter-island transport
that is the point that there is no such transport.
This feels like something that an automated system could pretty easily detect, up to the range of visibility, and raise the seaplane up if this happens.
Further, this is an inter-island route. Adding dedicated monitoring seems imminently doable.
Yes, this is a concern. No, it's not hard to deal with.
Isn’t the deal with rogue waves that they’re rogue? They’re not just big waves that slowly and predictably approach you from the horizon, then continue on their way past you in the opposite direction - they arise suddenly, unpredictably, without warning. One minute everything is smooth sailing, peaks and troughs of a few feet, and then suddenly the sea drops out from under you and now you’re in a 30 foot trough, or the sea just bunches up and you’re facing a 30 foot wave - maybe it grows out of nowhere, with you on top of it.
It seems like if it is a nodal-point/interference issue, the probability has to be so small because it's a small area & momentary.
You're probably right. But it also makes me think this might be a fantastically unlikely problem. I wonder where we'd get data on the likeliness of rogue waves of what size around Hawaii. It also stirs wondermemt about wavelength/periodicity of wave systems.
It’s always cool to see a new contender trying to throw in their hat and get started.
Don’t know about giving grants though. They should be able to drum up enough business to make it work if it’s going to be viable long term. Lot of inter-island hopping in Hawaii.
The competitor to this is a boat, traditional airplane (including electric).
Hawaii airlines is the “traditional way” to get between the islands: the main airline taking people between islands for a long time now. Southwest is also now a pretty formidable competitor to them. So really, any service just needs to compete with them, because that’s what everybody takes. I guess there is also Mokulele, Makani Kai and Lanai too for the four seasons crowd and I think there is a boat to Lanai from Maui too.
I know people sometimes jump helicopters for way out. That’s expensive but there are a lot of places that are super hard to get to otherwise. I think there’s a real use case for a vtol taxi service.
You’ll know this company is getting serious if after starting up (presuming they do) they start a rewards program with someone like Costco. That’s the best way to get local people using your service. Free points trips compensated by Costco purchases will put asses in seats in the islands for sure. Busiest Costco in the world is in Oahu.
These ground effect craft are super cool but I fear that these will also fail for the same reasons they have historically, reliability, unpredictable downtime due to being very sensitive to weather / ocean conditions.
I suspect efficiency in what looks more like traditional air travel will be the way to go.
The Seaglider would be great for my region of South-east Canada. There are four islands and two other areas each with at least three sides facing water. It wouldn't be open ocean so wave height shouldn't be too bad.
The big thing here now is Right Whales ships bash their heads in since they seem to always be in the way of ships. Cruise ships, cargo ships, fishing all have to slow down to a crawl if whales are spotted.
Flying would be far faster than ferry some take 8 hours others 1 hour. Although flights here are ridiculously expensive $800 to $1,000 one-way to go 150km.
Meta: it seems like Hawaii (Hawai'i) would be a pretty good place to be able to do public transit, given the not-huge distances involved on any particular island, but AFAICT, it's not very good there.
Also it seems like it's not very bike / cycling friendly either:
You do have to separate Honolulu from pretty much everywhere else in the islands.
Most of the small town/cities/resort communities are quite walkable once you get there. Everything else is extremely spread out--rural for the most part by any reasonable measure. Also often difficult terrain.
I like the concept. This is how pelicans flow low over the water. However, I have sailed between the Hawaiian islands. The air and water are turbulent due to trade winds and currents getting pushed through gaps in the islands, especially between Oahu and Maui, the most popular route. I looked at the video on their website and it didn't appear stable enough in flight to withstand a big puff pushing it down into a double-size wave. It would probably only work in a narrow weather window.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadhttps://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BE...
https://beatofhawaii.com/hawaii-seaglider-flies-forward-with...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea_Monster
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-effect_vehicle
https://www.regentcraft.com/seagliders/viceroy
I wonder what new battery technology they plan to use that they think will provide a 250% range increase. The 180mph top speed is impressive, but you're not going to be able to operate at that speed around other sea traffic.
You need just the right situation for this thing - docks not too far apart, but far enough apart that an ordinary ferry is too slow. An area with so little sea traffic that it can go full speed. Long Beach to Catalina Island is out; you can't zip these things across a major shipping lane full of container ships. Wall Street to the Hamptons has the same problem. Not sure about inter-island in Hawaii. Probably more useful in areas with lots of small populated islands. East Asia, maybe.
This thing is certainly buildable, but it seems to be more in the private jet category than a major transportation system.
JAL: https://press.jal.co.jp/en/items/uploads/7bd1bf3e9623f0ade78...
Mesa: https://www.mesa-air.com/regent
Mokulele (owned by Southern) links to news report about it on their home page: https://mokuleleairlines.com
The investments are real, but at least some of them might be more about the optics of investing in zero emissions planes rather than actually expecting these to enter service
> you can't zip these things across a major shipping lane full of container ships.
Why not? At the speed this thing is flying the container ships are almost stationary. If we take the Long Beach to Catalina Island example the flight time would be on the order of 10 minutes. If you take the full speed of a container ship they can travel around 5 miles under that. If you plot a course which avoids them by that much they can't jump in front of the plane even if they try.
so all the concerns are accurate and nothing will be done to create a different reality. understandable. cant wait to visit!
Here's a contemporaneous report about the lava rocks from an independent journalist: http://www.islandbreath.org/2007Year/09-access&transport/070...
The rocks weren't the direct cause of the Superferry shutting down, but in my recollection they sure charted the course that way: people who might have seemed to some like they were just fighting change to fight change suddenly had irrefutable evidence to confirm their fears. There were of course other legal challenges that actually led to the shutdown, bankruptcy, and subsequent abandonment of the vessels. But at the time, on the neighbor islands, it sure crystalized the opposition.
> The Hawaii Superferry started service in 2007 but only lasted until 2009 after the state Supreme Court ruled that a law allowing it to operate without a second complete environmental study was unconstitutional.
A lot of the outer island folks loved it. I did. I lived on Maui at the time.
Also since its effectively float-able by design it has the potential to be very safe even if its propulsion breaks during the trip. you could just send another plane to take the passengers off then take the broken plane home pulled by a ship. This capability should be designed in.
The limited trip length might even lend itself to concepts that are fully or partially battery powered.
one downside is that the plane might not be able to be used in rougher weather.
To be clear, what I read about the ferry service being shut down made it sound like Hawaii has some dysfunction preventing good and normal things from happening, just sounds like this would be less feasible
This thing is electric and flies over the water. So it uses way less power per mile than if it was a boat in the water. And likewise because it flies in ground effect, it has an advantage over electrical planes as well. Hydrofoils might be close enough but still use more power and are probably also a lot slower.
The cost of the electricity is less of a concern here since electricity is cheap. The main efficiency related concern is the impact it has on range as batteries are expensive and heavy. Distances in Hawaii are not enormous but long enough that you'd have to worry about this. So, given that this thing has the needed range, it should be quite attractive as an alternative to planes. Cheaper and cleaner to operate (presumably) and quick enough that the difference doesn't matter. And a lot faster than ferries or hydrofoils.
It better be able to fly out of ground effect as well, or service would have to be suspended whenever the sea state doesn't allow it.
Currently, the only way to travel between the islands is by actual airplanes, through airports, with all the annoyances that comes with that, TSA, security, bag checks, prohibited items, and a gazillion other rules. That's what this thing will compete against, and it's pretty much a slam dunk.
Unless it will be lobbied to death like the predecessors.
There were also a lot of environmental protests against the Superferry that I doubt can all be chalked up to car rental and airline lobbying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_Superferry
If they're keeping TSA for intrastate flightd it's just as a fed funded voluntary jobs program for low IQ undereducated people to not have to rely on state welfare .
I have done an inter-island flight from smaller small prop plane terminal in Kona adjacent to the main (but still small) terminal and I'm guessing I didn't have a security screening in that case.
The fact that you could bring your car to another island was epic. These planes cannot do that.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/128397643/transport-revolut...
"Ocean Flyer’s seagliders would be able to fly people between Wellington and Lyttelton in an hour for $60 a seat, or between Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour and Whangarei in 30 minutes for $30, Aslam forecast."
Feels pretty speculative
It's too far to use the Harbour infrastructure at either end. You would have to build a pier on the southern side of Wellington (say Island Bay) and then use New Brighton pier. That works out to about 295 km.
With only 300km range, it's hard to find good routes in NZ.
From what I can tell, the design is still in development. The 300km number is probably more of a conservative estimate than an actual range. The Ocean Flyer team might be gambling on the real-world range being long enough for the Christchurch-Wellington route.
That said, given how much the current ferry has issues - maybe this is just as safe.
The current Regent ekranoplan, not yet shipping, is a 12 passenger model. That seems small for an inter-island ferry. It would be faster than a ferry, but since the existing inter-island ferry routes only run about an hour, more speed may not be worth the trouble.
Probably just a tourist attraction.
[1] https://archive.is/CkcJI
Something that could take a few shipping containers, automobiles, passengers etc. however, you'd think there would be a greater demand for something like that.
Ekranoplan is a class of vehicles; the "Caspian Sea Monster" was an individual experimental ekranoplan (the Lun-class was a later large combat ekranoplan, with a short career.)
> For these kind of endeavours you'd really want to go big or home
I don't know, I think for commercial ventures without bottomless military funding backing, starting small makes sense, there's lots of places small tourist ekranoplans could find a market.
Yes and no. One the one hand, absolutely a tourist attraction. Its projected to be cheaper than flying, and hopes to be a lot less hassle. (Expect pushback from the airlines. )
However small capacity, cheap, accessible transport is a boon for islanders living in archipelago. For starters you're not bound to islands big enough for an airport.
Given that the vehicle is electric, and hawaii has abundant solar energy, it could end up being very cost effective.
So what starts small, and touristy, might end up being mainstream and useful in lots of similar (ie island) contexts.
On the environmental front I expect the usual "complain about anything new" crowd, coupled with push-back from existing operators. But it's hard to see how this does more environmental harm than planes or boats.
The competition for that space is seaplanes, including both floatplanes and flying boats, which have been around for a century. Electric versions of those exist, like https://harbourair.com/corporate-responsibility/goingelectri... , and https://el-fly.no/ wants to build an electric amphibious flying boat.
Yes, a ground-effect vehicle has better wing efficiency than an aircraft. However, it has disadvantages, like how it handles waves. A flying boat, for example, only needs to worry about the waves at the departure and arrival locations, which may be in a protected harbor or channel, while a GEV must deal with larger waves between the islands.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-effect_vehicle#Advantag... for additional comparisons.
> So what starts small, and touristy
I flew on a seaplane between the US and the Bahamas, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk%27s_International_Airlin... . It was a fun touristy thing, but not touristy enough to maintain a commercial seaplane service.
> On the environmental front I expect the usual "complain about anything new" crowd
Thing is, this isn't new. Ground effect vehicles have been around for decades, the technology is pretty mature, and the problems also pretty well known. If someone cracks that nut - great! - but a lot of people have tried and failed to extend its use outside of some niche areas. That history of failure tends to dampen enthusiasm.
> But it's hard to see how this does more environmental harm than planes or boats.
That calculation is not easy. If you want to minimize environmental harm the most, switch to sailboat. Cook used no fossil fuels to travel to and around Hawaii, and neither did the Polynesians who discovered the place.
If you want to minimize CO2 emissions, ban all inter-island flights and switch to ferries - https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint says ferries emit about 1/7th of the CO2 as short-haul flights.
And there are electric ferries these days, like https://www.electrive.com/2021/03/02/worlds-largest-electric... , though that's not ocean going. See https://electrek.co/2023/01/17/worlds-largest-electric-ferry... for one in the works.
Airplanes operate in a hostel environment where the penalty for failure is severe. The translates into a lot of (good) regulation which makes planes expensive to make, and expensive to maintain.
Ground effect vehicles are more in the car/boat space when it comes to mechanical failure. Sure I'm not saying it can be made of some wire and duct tape, but the necessary mechanical standard is a -lot- lower (ie cheaper.)
>> . If you want to minimize environmental harm
Sure. Or stay home. There's always something better. But that wasn't the hypothesis. The statement was that its better than planes or (motor) boats.
Frankly, if an electric craft is charged from solar or wind, its already as good as a sailboat.
Understood. Though as the comparison link mentions, there's another important cost - "limited utility has kept production levels low enough that it has been impossible to amortize development costs sufficiently to make GEVs competitive with conventional aircraft".
I don't pretend to have more than a surface knowledge about topic, but when the idea has been around decades, developed and promoted for decades, and is still only a niche mode of travel (along with hovercraft, hydrofoil, and flying boats), that tells me the doubts aren't simply from those who "complain about anything new".
> The statement was that its better than planes or (motor) boats.
Sure. My comment was to point out how complicated the full calculation was, because it should include the electric ferries that becoming available, and not limit itself to motor boats.
Not quite. This thing depends on dynamic stability. If a wingtip touches the water at speed, it will probably flip. It has to turn without banking. So it has many of the stability and control problems of an aircraft at landing, plus some of the wave problems of a seaplane. It's not like a big, wide hovercraft, where, if you lose power, you just settle down into boat mode.
Chalks suffered a tragic structural failure, likely caused by corrosion, which mostly ended the company.
Certainly claiming these could be in service next year is a tad over optimistic.
No, this is a combination ekranoplan and hydrofoil. I think whether it's classified as the "world's first" is going to depend on what counts as operational, but it's certainly much less common than ekranoplans.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3heh9swH2Zw&list=PLXvxJNOIXB...
The one in the link actually looks fairly sane, it's smaller and powered by only 1 turboprop by the looks of it (edit: nope it has 2 turbofans in the nose too). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-90_Orlyonok
Edit: oops I see it was already mentioned sorry. I was reading on mobile.
What inter-island ferry routes? There aren’t any, and when there were many of the routes were muuuuuch longer than an hour. The I harbored portion of the island chain is almost 300 miles long - a trip from Hilo to Honolulu would be ~240 miles.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920
* https://old.reddit.com/r/geography/comments/175un38/why_does...
> Ferry operations were suspended in March 2009 after the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that a state law allowing the Superferry to operate without a second complete environmental impact statement was unconstitutional.[2] The company went bankrupt as a result of these actions preventing service in Hawaii.[3] On July 2, 2009 a Delaware Bankruptcy Court granted the company's motion to abandon both the ships Alakai and Huakai, ending all possibilities that the company might return to Hawaii;[4] the ships were bought by the US Maritime Administration in 2010.[5] The United States Navy eventually purchased the craft for a total of $35M, a small fraction of their original $180M cost.[6]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_Superferry
But I'm not seeing why it would be bad for a local ferry. The sailors operating the ferry are going to be living on the islands, so requiring them to be legal permanent residents doesn't seem too onerous. And these don't have enough range to be traveling to foreign islands so that complication doesn't apply.
So no Chinese investors, or Korean ships. So less competition.
You are right that the requirement for the crews to be local is less of an issue for a local ferry.
Sea animals collide with motor boats occasionally but this Seaglider would be even more likely to do so because:
- It doesn't produce as much underwater noise as a motor which would normally serve to alarm sea animals.
- It goes a lot faster, giving sea animals less time to react.
Then there is the concern about what a collision would cause to the Seaglider itself if the hydrofoil broke off or worse, didn't break off and caused the Seaglider to plunge, nose first, into the ocean.
The other thing to be concerned about are sub-surface rocks. If a boat goes over a rock that's hidden just below the surface, it can badly damage the boat and motor and can cause death, but again, the faster you go, the more damage can be done.
Also rocks are only a concern in a small area of ocean around the takeoff and landing areas, which will presumably be fairly well surveyed.
The current plane's wingspan is 65 feet, which probably means it flies about 32 feet (half a wingspan) off the water. Rogue waves can easily be that high in mild weather, and hitting even a small amount of water at 200 mph (claimed cruise speed) is bad.
Lots of sea birds too, presumably, at that altitude.
It's small compared to regular flight, but it's far more efficient than a regular boat hull pushing the water. A lot of that efficiency is achieved in hydrofoil mode, but lifting into ground effect mode should be even more efficient than hydrofoil (albeit as you say at some loss of stability).
There are already several electric hydrofoil pleasure boats available that have remarkable range, i.e. Navier and Candela.
the certification of the craft as a ship instead of a plane. I think it'd be very easy to build today a flying boat like the ones from 30s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_314_Clipper), yet certification cost of it makes it unfeasible as a business endeavor.
In general, if I remember correctly, the cheap inter-island transportation isn't really wanted there as it is expected to bring homeless/etc. to the otherwise affluent islands.
There’s already dirt cheap inter-island transport, it’s just slow. A homeless guy doesn’t care if the ferry takes 2 hours instead of 30 minutes when the ticket is $40.
https://www.oahutomaui.com/default.html
>There’s already dirt cheap inter-island transport
that is the point that there is no such transport.
This feels like something that an automated system could pretty easily detect, up to the range of visibility, and raise the seaplane up if this happens.
Further, this is an inter-island route. Adding dedicated monitoring seems imminently doable.
Yes, this is a concern. No, it's not hard to deal with.
You're probably right. But it also makes me think this might be a fantastically unlikely problem. I wonder where we'd get data on the likeliness of rogue waves of what size around Hawaii. It also stirs wondermemt about wavelength/periodicity of wave systems.
Not necessarily, especially around costal islands in the ocean
The confluence of wind and tide around islands causes unpredictable ant violent sea conditions
Costal sailors know this
Don’t know about giving grants though. They should be able to drum up enough business to make it work if it’s going to be viable long term. Lot of inter-island hopping in Hawaii.
The competitor to this is a boat, traditional airplane (including electric).
Hawaii airlines is the “traditional way” to get between the islands: the main airline taking people between islands for a long time now. Southwest is also now a pretty formidable competitor to them. So really, any service just needs to compete with them, because that’s what everybody takes. I guess there is also Mokulele, Makani Kai and Lanai too for the four seasons crowd and I think there is a boat to Lanai from Maui too.
I know people sometimes jump helicopters for way out. That’s expensive but there are a lot of places that are super hard to get to otherwise. I think there’s a real use case for a vtol taxi service.
You’ll know this company is getting serious if after starting up (presuming they do) they start a rewards program with someone like Costco. That’s the best way to get local people using your service. Free points trips compensated by Costco purchases will put asses in seats in the islands for sure. Busiest Costco in the world is in Oahu.
I suspect efficiency in what looks more like traditional air travel will be the way to go.
The big thing here now is Right Whales ships bash their heads in since they seem to always be in the way of ships. Cruise ships, cargo ships, fishing all have to slow down to a crawl if whales are spotted.
Flying would be far faster than ferry some take 8 hours others 1 hour. Although flights here are ridiculously expensive $800 to $1,000 one-way to go 150km.
Also it seems like it's not very bike / cycling friendly either:
* https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/07/keona-blanks-when-it-comes...
Most of the small town/cities/resort communities are quite walkable once you get there. Everything else is extremely spread out--rural for the most part by any reasonable measure. Also often difficult terrain.
Rather than try to build and maintain difficult overland transport at land-speed, we could seaglider between coastal villages.
>A preliminary survey of Hawai‘i residents showed they are concerned that seagliders will only be affordable to the affluent ...
So the fares might be too high.
[...]
>Others expressed their concern about how seagliders can potentially impact communities through an increase in visitors.
So the fares might be too low.
Fun.