The Vast Size and Weird Shape of Things to Come

Founded in 2012, Flying Whales is a French aviation concern about the business of developing the LCA60T, a rigid airship with an ambitious mission and a nigh-unbelievable carrying capacity.

Originally designed to meet the grueling imperatives of the forestry industry, the LCA60T's abilities to load and unload at the hover are intended to provide solutions to global logistical challenges while maintaining a high-degree of ecological probity.

To date, Flying Whales has undertaken three financing rounds which raised €10-million, €30-million, and €122-million respectively. The numbers speak to the promise of the enterprise’s cardinal concept.

Conventional helicopters, for the most part, are capable of lifting loads up to four-tons. Heavy-lift helicopters the likes of Sikorsky’s storied S-64 Skycrane manage external loads as heavy as 25,000-pounds (13.4-tons). Conversely, Flying Whales’s LCA60T hauls aloft a staggering sixty-tons—roughly nine African Bush elephant bulls or eight-hundred human beings.

The LCA60T airship, by virtue of its superb payload, one-hundred-meter-long cargo hold, autonomy, endurance, and ability to access isolated locales, is ideally-suited to the rigors of not only the timber industry, but to sectors such as: energy (transport of multiple wind-turbine blades in a single operation); humanitarian (transport of large quantities of emergency supplies to distressed populations); aerospace (transport of heavy, bulky, fragile booster rockets and satellite components); maritime shipping (cargo transfer from ship-to-wharf or ship-to-inland-destination); construction (transport of building materials and equipment, transport and installation of prefabricated elements for the construction of buildings or engineering structures, transport of prefabricated houses for isolated populations); and health-care (transport of mobile hospitals to populations displaced from urban centers).

Flying Whales aspires to see its LCA60T airship take flight in 2025. Thereafter, the company plans to build 160 such vessels over the following ten-years. Subject aircraft will be produced in three facilities located in France; Quebec, Canada; and the Asia-Pacific region respectively. The three sites will each produce 12 airships yearly. Worldwide demand for the LCA60T is estimated at eight-hundred units.

For purpose of adding personnel, primarily engineers, to its employee roster, Flying Whales plans to undertake recruitment campaigns in France and Canada throughout the remainder of 2023.

Flying Whales has announced its entry into Groupement des Industries Françaises Aéronautiques et Spatiales (GIFAS), a French aerospace industries association comprising upwards of 366 companies specializing in the study, development, production, marketing and maintenance of vehicles, structures, systems, components, hardware, and software germane to the aviation and aerospace industries. The organization is headquartered in Paris.

FMI: www.flying-whales.com/en/home