Aircraft

Video: Airfish-8 wing-in-ground effect aircraft slated for service in 2025

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The Airfish-8: another incarnation of the ground effect vehicle hoping to find commercial success
Wigetworks/Peluga
The Airfish-8: another incarnation of the ground effect vehicle hoping to find commercial success
Wigetworks/Peluga
Wigetworks Airfish-8: accelerates through the water before lifting off
Wigetworks
Ground Effect Vehicles like the Airfish-8 have been around for many decades, but are yet to break through as a commercial success
Wigetworks
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Hovering uncannily close to the waves, the Airfish-8 carves its way over water three times quicker than a boat, and 2.3 times more efficiently than an aircraft. Singapore's ST Engineering has announced its first orders, set to enter service in 2025.

It's arresting enough to look at even when it's just floating, with its enormous reverse-delta wing, large double T-tail, top-mounted pusher props and wickedly upswept wingtips. But to watch it in action, gliding perilously close to the ocean, leaving more of an indentation behind it than a wake? Absolutely spectacular.

The Airfish-8 will carry two crew, and either 8 passengers or up to a ton of cargo. It's a combustion-powered seaplane requiring no particular infrastructure, since it'll operate off regular jetty facilities, and its 500-horsepower V8 car engine fills up on regular unleaded.

It'll push itself out of port on the water, then accelerate to takeoff speed, at which point it'll lift off and stay between 2-23 ft (0.6-7 m) over the water surface, taking advantage of the bonus lift in this wing-in-ground effect zone to fly low and efficiently at up to 90 knots (104 mph/167 km/h). Much faster than boats, then – and a lot more comfortable when the water's choppy, although it'll still have to take off and land in the waves.

It's not as fast as a quick seaplane, but it's considerably more efficient, as well as easier to fly. And when it comes to tourist operations, it's hard to ignore just how gorgeous this thing is in motion; people will book a long way ahead for an Airfish ride, we suspect.

As we wrote last time we looked at the Airfish, this is the realization of 1960s-era designs from one Dr. Alexander Martin Lippisch, who pioneered this reverse delta/t-tail configuration back when Russian Ekranoplans were still roaming the Earth. This wing configuration allows a wing-in-ground effect vehicle to fly at altitudes up to 50% of its wingspan, letting it rise higher when conditions are choppier where the Ekranoplans of the day had to stay under about 10%.

While it still looks like something out of Star Wars some 60 years after the initial idea, the Airfish is a relatively proven design and certainly not the high-tech option in 2024. For passenger operations, that'll be the upcoming Regent Seaglider, which is fully electric, and also uses a hydrofoiling system to rise out of the water for a low-drag takeoff into ground effect. And in a military sense, DARPA is working on a giant "Liberty Lifter" X-Plane that'll haul up to 100 tons of cargo.

ST Engineering has entered a joint venture with Peluca, formerly known as Wigetworks, to commercialize the Airfish under the name ST Engineering AirX. AirX has now announced its first customer sale, a letter of intent (LOI) that'll send up to 10 aircraft to Eurasia Mobility Solutions, where they'll be used in tourism and private transportation around Turkey. Staged delivery is planned to begin in 2025.

Ground Effect Vehicles like the Airfish-8 have been around for many decades, but are yet to break through as a commercial success
Wigetworks

Since it's an LOI, not an actual sale, we'd presume there are many possible ways Eurasia can wriggle out of this agreement, depending on how AirX goes with getting the thing certified for manufacturing. According to Breaking Defense, the US marines have also "discussed" the Airfish, and then Singapore military "has viewed it." We won't be getting too excited about that just yet!

But in a pure sci-fi sense, we'd love to see these things out there working. They might not be clean-running like the Seaglider, but they look so damn cool we have to root for them.

Source: ST Engineering

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12 comments
Aermaco
As long as it can fly well above any high waves that are due to high winds which would be when it needs more power for higher speed lift, then it remains very viable.
jerryd
This is 1 class of craft that can do battery power well as very efficient and can carry more weight.
Username
AirX ? Could they not find a name of their own?
paul314
FWIW, this isn't that much slower than a lot of the smaller prop-based aircraft that operate off short runways or even grass. Those tend to top out around 130-150mph.

I wonder whether something like this can operate effectively on rivers or long lakes. Imagine buzzing from manhattan to albany in a couple hours
Jinpa
What happens when an orca vertically torpedoes a seal and breaches in front of this plane?
Aermaco
@jinpa, the belly hull and prow just need to be orca impact-proof, but also fly at or slightly above orca, whale, and dolphin breach heights to also protect its wings,?
Adrian Akau
Looks good for fairly calm waters. It should sell.
Nelson
Does the water need to be still. In big waves and storm conditions?
Ry
I'd love to watch it in action, gliding perilously close to the ocean as a rogue wave comes out of nowhere.
Aermaco
@Ry, I doubt you would want to see a wave crash that injures people, but a flying model or full-size crash test may need to verify a computer's structural survivability design for when a rogue wave prewarning time is too short for the powertrain's ability to react and climb fast enough.

With all electrical power, they would have huge capacitors fully charged for objects higher than their efficient flight's low altitude. Even crash avoidnce is never needed the capacitors would be efficiently used for added take-off power needs.

I would imagine they already are studying adding electric power to their ICE engine to make them safer, and they should include a discussion of object avoidance systems to make approvals quicker and market shares bigger.