Spanish airline Air Nostrum, which operates mainly as an Iberia franchise in regional routes in Spain and its neighbouring countries, may become the first airship airline in decades.

It has just been announced that Air Nostrum is ordering 10 Airlanders. Currently being developed by British firm Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), the Airlander10 airship has the honour of being, by some measures, the largest aircraft in the world right now.

It has been considered for special missions, such as the luxury air cruises to the North Pole being planned by OceanSky (a startup that I covered here for CNN), but with Air Nostrum it has the potential to become an everyday type of transport.

Thinking about the type of routes Air Nostrum operates, I am thinking about, for example, links between the Balearic Islands and between the archipelago and the mainland. The low emissions profile of this type of vehicle is also a big plus in a context of environmental emergency.

But this is not the only, let’s say, “unconventional initiative that Air Nostrum is involved in.

Following the liberalization of the Spanish high speed rail network, the Valencia-based airline has partnered with Italy’s railway company Trenitalia to invest in the launch of a new train operator, called Iryo, which will compete with Spain’s national railway “AVE” high speed brand and with the latest entrant in this market, Ouigo, a brand of France’s SNCF.

(btw, check out this piece I wrote for The Points Guy about the linkages between airlines and train operators and combined products across Europe!)

And this is not all, because Air Nostrum is also betting on electric propulsion, again a technology that, even with its current limitations can be a good fit for Air Nostrum’s core network of short routes.

In this case it is partnering with another regional airline, Volotea, and engineering firm Dante Aeronautical, which is active in both Spain and Australia, where it is working on seaplane electrification. If you wish to learn more about Dante Aeronautical, I suggest you check this podcast episode I recorded with, David Doral, one of its co-founders.

For all these projects to stand a chance to come to fruition, Air Nostrum has to get through to 2026, when the Airlander may be ready to start commercial services. So, in this regard, it comes handy that the Spanish government has just approved the €111M support package requested by Air Nostrum.

The money comes from funds set aside by the Spanish government to support those firms considered strategic that have been hit by the covid crisis, a definition that covers pretty much all airlines, as seen in the different requests approved so far.

First airship airline since WW2? Air Nostrum orders Airlanders