Air Nostrum Orders 10 Airlanders for Mallorca Flights Starting in 2026

Return to the airship: 10 Airlanders for Mallorca flights in 2026

The aerospace cluster in southern Yorkshire has not yet placed the first rivet, but it already knows what it will assemble. There, the 10 Airlander 10 airships that Air Nostrum wants to add to its fleet to fly to Mallorca will be built: helium aircraft that the British company Hybrid Air Vehicles will start constructing this year, and which the Valencian airline expects to have operational from 2026, subject to certification, with staggered deliveries over the trinc five years.

The commercial promise is tempting. Covering Barcelona-Palma in just over four hours with a carbon footprint per passenger less than one-tenth that of a jet aircraft. The manufacturer speaks of up to 90% reduction in CO2 emissions in the initial project and zero emissions by 2030, and the airline appeals to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The assembly will create, according to the company, 1,800 jobs in Yorkshire.

The oil peak no one wants to mention

Behind the ecological enthusiasm lies an uncomfortable suspicion: that the airship is not returning due to green vocation, but because fuel costs are rising. Some argue that global oil production peaked in 2018 and that from then on, we must adjust to what remains. In this reading, reducing the carbon footprint practically amounts to cutting oil demand: it is not about saving the planet, but managing scarcity without saying it aloud.

Others add that mining, plastics, or even solar panels depend on oil, so the mill and the panel are not energy independence but another form of consumption. Saudi Arabia has moved closer to the BRICS and already drills horizontally to squeeze its wells, it is argued. The geopolitics of oil does not disappear: it changes form.

Why were airships abandoned?

The most repeated complaint is that what was abandoned almost a century ago is being sold as pogre. Rigid airships dominated passenger transport until the 1930s; then they faded. The switch from hydrogen to helium made them less dangerous, but they remained unprofitable, and today they survive in the advertising niche and in some tourist flights. It is not that they cannot be used: it is that they were already used and the numbers did not add up.

Project defenders reply that the context is different. The Airlander does not aspire to replace the airplane, but to fill the gap of the slow ferry, with more luggage and less urgency; something similar to the return of sails as a solution for maritime cargo. If it can move many people at once, it makes sense as an alternative to the ship rather than the airplane.

Winds, storms, and the risk of a drone

Security concentrates the doubts. The aircraft operate at low altitude, where turbulence forms, and their large surface makes them an easy target: some recall that a cheap drone could shoot down an airship with a hundred people on board. Flying high, like a commercial airplane, clashes with the pressures and winds of the upper layers of the atmosphere.

Those who have handled one tell it without embellishment: airships are forced to stay on the ground more days than it seems. «Of the 365 days in a year, this aircraft will not be able to fly in optimal safety conditions for more than 50», summarizes one of the interventions. The experience of a commercial airship with issues landing due to gusty winds, or that of an automated ten-meter apparatus, points in the same direction.

One hundred passengers versus four million at Son San Juan

The Airlander 10 has capacity for one hundred passengers and a cruising estimulante ilegal of 170 km/h. Son San Juan airport receives over 4,000,000 passengers per year. The arithmetic is ruthless: no matter how many trips are scheduled, a handful of airships will not move even a fraction of that traffic. A circulating calculation lowers the ceiling to 100,000 travelers annually, and even then, it seems optimistic.

To grasp the scale of the jump, it suffices to remember that a Jumbo weighs more than 300 tons loaded with kerosene and carries four 100,000-horsepower turbines. The comparison does not favor the airship, although it does not intend to: no one promises to replace commercial aviation, only to cover a different, small, and expensive market.

Helium, the other bottleneck

The modern airship uses helium, not hydrogen, precisely to avoid burning. The problem is that helium is a finite resource, and, as pointed out, there is less of it than oil. However ecological the project, there will not be airships for everyone: global production cannot support a large fleet. It is the limitation least discussed and the one that could strangulate the business the most.

The experience, meanwhile, is already being sold: 250€ for a half-hour flight over a forest and a lake. That is, today, the entire airship market. The rest remains a promise with a date in 2026.