Is it a boat? Is it a plane? Airlines in Hawaii bet on REGENT

Picture: REGENT

This interesting era of aviation innovation that we are living through has seen the return of rather innovative - some may say even extravagant - concepts for air travel.

Or, like in this case, a sort of a mix between air and sea, because REGENT’s seaglider is a perfected iteration of the ground-effect vehicle, a type of flying-but-not-quite contraption that was already pioneered by the Soviets back in the 1970s.

It is not my intention to provide here a detailed account of what this technology does or of the overall goals that REGENT, a startup with some prominent Silicon Valley backers, has set up to do. If you wish to dig deeper into this matter, I suggest you check this piece about REGENT that I published on CNN some time ago, or more generally, these other two pieces, also on CNN, about the comeback of ground-effect vehicles and its historical precedents.

Suffices to say that REGENT’s seaglider, so is its vehicle called, is a ground effect vehicle - simplifying much imagine a cross-over between a fast boat and a plane, or an hovercraft that levitates over water rather than resting on an air cushion. The seaglider flies very fast just a few meters above water and is expected to be able to provide quick downtown-to-downtown access by using sea lanes.

What caught my eye this time is how REGENT seems to have found fertile ground in the Hawaiian archipelago.

Both Hawaiian Airlines, the state’s major carrier, and Mokulele, a local inter-island airline, have expressed their interest in adding seagliders to their fleets, in order to provide, thus, an alternative mode of transportation between islands in the future.

Mokulele has been particularly active in the field of green aviation, having been already a fight testing partner of Ampaire, one of the leading projects in the field of hybrid-electric aviation in America, and it will, in principle get some 12 seagliders in their 12-passenger Viceroy version (Mokulele’s parent company, Southern Airways, has 20 on order). So, betting on the success of the hybrid-electric seaglider seems to be fitting this strategy well.

Interestingly, Hawaiian Airlines is not only ordering a larger, 100-passenger version, which will be called “Monarch”, but also becoming an equity investor in REGENT. Perhaps this will help the larger seaglider happen earlier (it is still further into the future than the “Viceroy”).

When I spoke with REGENT’s CEO Bill Thalheimer for the CNN piece, he mentioned markets along the East coast as the likely primary markets for the seaglider, but it seems that they will be flying over slightly warmer waters first!