Electric AS700 makes successful debut flight

Workers prepare for the maiden flight of AS700D, a lithium batterypowered airship at the Jingmen Zhanghe Airport in Hubei province on Friday. (ZHAO PING/FOR CHINA DAILY)

The AS700, the largest model of airship China has ever developed, now has an electrically powered version, according to Aviation Industry Corp of China, the nation's leading aircraft maker.

The first prototype of the lithium battery-powered AS700D carried out the type's first flight on Friday morning, making a short hover about 50 meters above the Jingmen Zhanghe Airport in Hubei province before landing on the same site.

After that, the test pilot Lin Hong conducted another three brief flights to check the prototype's performance, according to AVIC.

He was quoted by a news release as saying that compared with the baseline model that consumes aviation gasoline, "flying the electric type feels more smooth and comfortable."

According to AVIC, the AS700D features an advanced electric propulsion system, zero emission and lower noise, making it a suitable choice for occasions with high environmental requirements.

The new model has a maximum speed of 80 kilometers per hour, and a flight ceiling of 3.1 km. It can carry one pilot and nine tourists.

According to the Special Aircraft Research Institute, an AVIC subsidiary that develops the AS700 family, the institute has received confirmed orders for 23 AS700s and to-be-confirmed orders for 164 such airships.

The first AS700 user will be Guangxi Guilin Fangzhou General Aviation, a private company in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

The institute said it has started small-scale production of the AS700 baseline model. The first AS700 is scheduled to be delivered to the Guangxi company around October and will then be put into the aerial sightseeing business.

The institute is the sole State-owned research body that designs and makes airships. Before the AS700, it had designed a number of manned and unmanned airships since the mid-1980s. One of its manned airships, the FK-4, took part in the Beijing Asian Games in 1990.

However, commercial operations of manned airships had never emerged in China due to a mixture of factors such as tight control of low-altitude airspace and tiny market demand. That situation began to change several years ago in the wake of the central government's determination to tap the market value of the low-altitude airspace.

Research and development of the AS700 began in August 2018, primarily to meet the demand for aerial sightseeing tours.