Flying Whale LCA60T To Take Off From UAE Final Assembly Line!

• French aerospace startup Flying Whales has chosen the UAE for its final production facility for the LCA60T airship, aiming to supply customers in the Middle East, India, and Africa in 2027.
• The LCA60T airship, capable of lifting payloads up to 60 tons, uses hydrogen fuel cells and electric motors to operate, eliminating the need for extensive ground infrastructure.
• The move towards unmanned and environmentally sustainable airships has sparked interest in the industry, with other companies also developing cargo airships.

French aerospace startup Flying Whales has selected the United Arab Emirates as the home for a final production facility to supply its LCA60T unmanned cargo airship to customers in the Middle East, India, and Africa as early as 2027. The deal to build the electric cargo airships in the UAE was announced during the COP28 climate change summit in Dubai in early December.

The Flying Whale

The airship under development is aptly named the LCA60T because of its capability to lift payloads up to 60 tons. For perspective, the A330-200 converted freighter delivered to Air China this Friday is capable of lifting 61 tons of cargo. While it doesn’t have two Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines, the LCA60T will use hydrogen fuel cells to power a series of electric motors generating 5,360 horsepower and 6,3000,000 cubic feet of Helium. Unlike other methods of transporting cargo, the LCA60T doesn’t require a lot of ground infrastructure to operate. The airship is designed for point-to-point transport and is capable of reaching speeds of 54 knots. While originally designed to fit the needs of the French Forest Service to transport logs in isolated areas of France, Flying Whales taunts the airship’s ability to solve problems in the logistics industry for the delivery of humanitarian aid, energy, airlifting mobile hospitals, and cargo.

While airships were previously regarded as a technology of the past, losing favor to faster conventional aircraft, the push for increased environmental sustainability, coupled with advances in automation to make the airships unmanned, caused other startups like Russian-based Aerosmena and Amazon to develop cargo airships. For its part, Flying Whales has partnered with over 50 other companies, including big names like Safran, Honeywell, and Thales. Flying Whales has also attracted investors to come whale watching, raising over €122 million ($133 million) last year.

Regional Growth

While there are no publicly announced customers for the LCA60T in the Middle East as of yet, the region has been a major point of focus for futuristic aircraft types such as drones and advanced air mobility platforms. Electric Vertical Take Off and Landing developer Archer chose the Dubai Airshow to debut its Midnight aircraft. At the same time, Lilium also walked away from the 2023 Airshow with an order of ten of its platform from UAE-based Arcosjet. Flying Whales isn’t the only cargo drone developer to announce a production facility in the UAE in 2023. Dronamics walked away from this year’s Dubai Airshow with an agreement to build a production facility for its Black Swan cargo drone by 2025. Dronamics had also recently attracted orders from Dubai-based Aramax as a customer.

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Source: Simpleflying

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