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.
> 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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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
Deleted Comment
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
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.
Certainly claiming these could be in service next year is a tad over optimistic.
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.
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.
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.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3heh9swH2Zw&list=PLXvxJNOIXB...
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.
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.
Deleted Comment
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920
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.
* 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
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.
https://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.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.
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
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
The fact that you could bring your car to another island was epic. These planes cannot do that.
>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.