How Hybrid Air Vehicles Is Making World’s Longest Aircraft Longer

Company’s Airlander 10 already has matched fixed-wing history.

Jack Daleo

Monday, July 07, 2025 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

With a length of 302 feet, Hybrid Air Vehicles’ Airlander 10 is designed to be the world’s longest aircraft. [Courtesy: Hybrid Air Vehicles]

Key Takeaways:

Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) is developing the Airlander 10, a unique hybrid aircraft that combines lighter-than-air and fixed-wing characteristics, designed to be the world's longest and aiming for certification by 2029.
The versatile Airlander 10 offers runway-independent operation, long endurance, and significant payload capacity for diverse roles including luxury tourism, regional transport, cargo, and military logistics, with HAV planning for larger models and a transition to hydrogen-electric powertrains.
A primary challenge for HAV is to prove the aircraft's safety and reliability to overcome public skepticism and operational limitations, especially given past prototype incidents and historical airship perceptions.

See a mistake? Contact us.

Extending close to the length of a football field, U.K.-based Hybrid Air Vehicles’ (HAV) Airlander 10—dubbed “The Flying Bum” by the British public due to its double-ellipsoid airframe—is designed to be the world’s longest aircraft. Eventually, though, the 10-ton payload model could be the smallest in the Airlander family.

“We’ve always looked at larger Airlanders,” George Land, executive sales director for HAV, told FLYING, “and we’d always thought that probably a 50-ton aircraft was the next step up.”