French startup Aqualines WIG project

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www.challenges.fr

Mi-avion, mi-bateau: l’incroyable projet d'Aqualines

S’inspirant des Ekranoplan soviétiques, la start-up Aqualines développe des bateaux volants à 300km/h. Elle prévoit une installation à Bayonne.
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translation.

inspired gear to the soviet Ekranoplan, the start-up Aqualines develops boats flying capable of up to 300 km/h, suspended above the water. A site of production and testing is expected to Bayonne.



The proposed flying boat of the start-up Aqualines

They were called Ekranoplan. Gear soviets the false air's seaplane, developed in the years 1970-80 by the USSR. Tested on different scales, these gear, sometimes huge, like the "monster of the Caspian sea", were flying a few meters above the water or any flat surface thanks to the phenomenon known as ground effect. Victims of the cuts in the military budget, they were eventually abandoned in the 1990s. Thirty years after their disposal, the French start-up Aqualines has decided to take up the torch. His project: to develop a range of these vessels flying for the conveyance of passengers. "This machine has all the advantages: faster than a boat, cheaper than a plane, and greener than the two," says Guillaume Catala, founder of the company, with the Russian Pavel Tsarapkine and the French Laurent Godin.


How does it work? The Ekranoplan is based on an aerodynamic principle is well-known to drivers, the ground effect. When a plane is flying at very low altitude, the air chased down by the wings be struck to the ground or the surface of the water. This phenomenon creates a sort of cushion of air that keeps the device in volume In the clear, the Ekranoplan of Aqualines float like boats when they are at the judgment. They took off as soon as they
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How does obstacle avoidance & anti-collision work at 100 knots and 1m above the water?

I found one of their old brochures where there were advertising using this for existing passenger routes such as Hong Kong - Macau. I’m very familiar with that area and the number of container ships, fishing boats, small craft, channel markers, fish traps etc would make that impossible on a clear blue day, let alone in the monsoon season with rain squalls or at dusk/night. (In fact much of the high speed ferry route is limited to 35 knots today for safety reasons).

In island areas like the Caribbean and Hawaii you’d have problems with ocean swell. So you need an island area with low density AND well protected from big swells… maybe remote parts of South East Asia, Greece etc?
 
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I confirm, if they go to Bayonne, then it is the Gulf of Biscay - and you'd better not fly an ekranoplan there, not even in summer...
 
Ferry are less manœuvrables. Here you can hop (1000ft) or bank away. As those vehicles enjoy a greater lift per sqm, angular deviation from trajectory is more pronounced per angle of bank (more manœuvrable). Hence avoiding traffic is not a problem.
Radar can also do great things on horizontal or near horizontal line of sight. So fog won't temper a well equipped WiG.

Regarding swell, a well designed WIG will be able to fly well above but with a low efficiency. So the problem is not a safety concern but an economical one.
If you agree that the probability to make a profit with passengers transportation at 1m above the sea in non-cooperative weather is null, it's easy to understand that they won't operate at all during bad weather season.

The goal of a light WiG should not be to replace ferry and large cargo but to offer an alternative to existing transportation networks (reach faster, farther on non-scheduled routes).
 
TomcatViP said:
As those vehicles enjoy a greater lift per sqm, angular deviation from trajectory is more pronounced per angle of bank (more manœuvrable). Hence avoiding traffic is not a problem.
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... unless you are going that much faster.
which tends to be an issue if you are trying to fly, even very low.
 
@dan_inbox : At 100kt, I'd rather be in a WIG than in a speed boat. Don't forget that a well designed WiG can jump over any man made obstacle at sea.
 
TomcatViP said:
At 100kt, I'd rather be in a WIG than in a speed boat.
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Of course.
However, for commercial passenger traffic (the topic here), there are precious few speedboat services doing 100kt.

Separately, I have difficulty envisioning an economically-viable application of ekranoplans out of Bayone. Servicing Corsica, or Sardinia, on the other hand...
 
I am pretty sure you can lift off from Bordeaux main harbor (downtown), WiG around the Gironde estuary and cruise all the popular beach front down to Biarritz most of the days during the open summer season.
How does it sounds to you in term of revenues?
Then apply the same business model along the Med shores, France Spain, Corsica (as you pointed out)...

Once again, it's should not be all about going frontal with existing large ferries and boat services, it's about being an alternative offer.

Ferries can't offer such route as travel time prevents them to offer a competitive offer (must stack a lot of passengers to keep a price equal to road travel, hence with a scarcity of departure).
Train in summer season will soon have their price soaring thanks to the expected spikes in the electricity demand.

WiG's will transfer passengers directly from most downtowns with a large river to the sea front with an unique experience (fair weather). Being efficient airplane but also boat, cost of ownership will remain low. Imagine that a twin 500hp engined aircraft can carry 20pax while cruising with an engine shutoff to keep down fuel consumption at around 200kph (100kt).

In our example, it's Bordeaux downtown to Biarritz sea front in 100 min (without stop over).

I once made a 48hr trip from Columbia to Panama riding a speed Boat (with a nightly stop-over when the near moonless night prevented us to distinguish the coral barrier reef in the surf). I can ensure you that WiG will change things in a snap of a finger (ask your rear end its feelings about the difference).
 
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From the #1 blurb, I understood _transport_ passenger services. Getting people from A to B all year round.

I have no clue about sightseeing services. I'd guess the niche is rather small. Bigger than the airplane or helo sightseeing, but still small. And completely seasonal to boot. But I'm no expert on tourism.
 

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