London from above
I’ve always loved looking out of the plane as we come down into London, trying to find landmarks I can recognise. The trademark squiggle of the Thames around the Isle of Dogs; the green spaces of Kew. But it’s all crammed into a packed five minutes as you come in to land at Heathrow.
Now you can take a more leisurely look. An airship will carry you silently and slowly through the air above London. I’ve been told it’s the same as being on a sailing boat – you feel the eddies and currents of the air, more than you do on a plane, and you hear nothing but the wind going past. Very different from the experience of flying into Heathrow.
It feels more natural – and it’s more environmentally friendly too. Because the airship is filled with helium, which is lighter than air, it only has to expend energy on moving around – not getting up in the air in the first place. (Anyone concerned about the rumoured propensity of airships to burst into flames should know that this applied only to the early hydrogen-filled blimps – helium is much safer!)
On the negative side, airships are slow compared to planes – one left London for Dubai in November 2006 and still hasn’t got there, though that was because the Egyptian government wouldn’t let it overfly the Pyramids and it ended up turning tail for the Friedrichshafenairship centre instead. No airship – even the ‘new generation’ aerodynamically designed blimps – has ever managed more than 100 miles an hour.
Of course you’ll get the most out of any experience like this if you already know London. It’s much more fun pointing out different places to your friends – and quarrelling about whether they’re right, or you are – than just looking at a landscape you haven’t seen before.
The flights are expensive. £180 for a half hour flight, £360 for an hour. But I’m sorely tempted. It’s not an opportunity that’s going to be around for long, either – the airship is only going to be in London till August 21st.
Photo credit – Les Chatfield on Flickr
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