Originally Posted by
parabellum
A Squared
Given the quoted economics of the Airlander difficult to see how a positioning flight from the states, followed by a revenue flight of three hours, followed by the empty return flight would be cheaper than the Lander
Ummm, yeah. Obviously a long repositioning flight for a shrot charter is pretty unlikely to make sense in most cases. Although I have positioned empty from the Northeastern US to Santiago, to pick up a process vessel for a gold mine in Mauritania, the lack of which had halted production. The manager of the gold mine was there when we unloaded it, and he commented that it would take about 2 days to pay for the charter, which is why they were willing to pay to fly to Chile to pick it up. Anyway, that a bit of a thangent. You're kind of missing the point of my post. The point is, your post claiming the Airlander would be quicker than trying to arrange a heavy-lift aircraft is based in the idea that the Airlander is magically going to be there immediately, right exactly exactly when you need it, ready to start loading, but a heavy lift aircraft will have to be arranged and positioned. In other words, you want to compare the payload flight only of the airlander, to the whole process of arranging an ad-hoc charter when considering a heavy lift aircraft. In Ad-Hoc service the Airlander also will have to be arranged and positioned, and it will position very slowly. That was my point for commenting on how long it would take to position my aircraft to Manchester Vs the Airlander.