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Watch Video: “Regent’s hotly anticipated Seaglider is up, up and away”

“Regent’s hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed Seaglid­er is up, up and away,” writes cnbc.com. The news out­let also offers an excit­ing video along­side the arti­cle, show­ing the company’s pro­to­type sea­plane tak­ing a test flight across the waters of Nar­ra­gansett Bay in Rhode Island to prove this unique craft can “float, foil and fly”.

The first ver­sion the com­pa­ny aims to roll out, called the Viceroy, will be able to car­ry 12 pas­sen­gers between coastal or island des­ti­na­tions faster than bus­es, trains or tra­di­tion­al fer­ries, and at a low­er price than a com­mer­cial flight. To pre­pare for this launch, Regent has built a quar­ter-scale ver­sion of the Viceroy for test­ing (see video).

The arti­cle states, “This pro­to­type, nick­named ‘the Squire’, was able to motor out of a har­bour in Rhode Island slow­ly, then launch from a speed of about 40 mph into the air, where it flew about 10 feet above the ocean at a speed of close to 50 mph. The com­mer­cial ver­sion will fly high­er above the water at speeds of up to 180 mph.” The aim: cus­tomers can trav­el to a dock and board these sea­planes like they would a reg­u­lar fer­ry or water taxi.

Watch Video:

The arti­cle con­tin­ues, “(The craft) which launch­es and lands with the help of remote con­trols and a part­ly auto­mat­ed sys­tem, tra­vers­es through a har­bour and amid boat traf­fic, pow­ered by a recharge­able lithi­um-ion bat­tery. It cuts through the waves on hydro­foils, which are like under­wa­ter stilts or wings that give a boat tremen­dous wave tol­er­ance, mak­ing for a smooth ride even in chop­py waters.” 

And goes on, “Once on the edge of the har­bour, the Regent seaglid­er accel­er­ates and takes off, stay­ing with­in one wingspan of the water’s sur­face.”

Mike Klink­er, Founder and CTO of Regent, com­ment­ed, “It’s like fly­ing on a cush­ion of air, some­thing like a pel­i­can.” Accord­ing to Kinker, the dif­fi­cult part is design­ing a craft that can make the tran­si­tion from float­ing on a hydro­foil to lift­ing above the water.

He con­tin­ues, “When the vehi­cle is in the hydro­foils, it’s like dri­ving above the water sur­face on stilts. The waves pass beneath you. You’re real­ly insu­lat­ed from any waves or insta­bil­i­ty that would make a tra­di­tion­al boat ride uncom­fort­able for a pas­sen­ger.”

Mike Klink­er

Once the boat lifts off the sur­face and has pulled those hydro­foils out of the water, “It is sim­i­lar to being in a tra­di­tion­al air­lin­er where it’s a very smooth ride with the excep­tion that we are fly­ing low over the sur­face of the water, giv­ing you some­thing like a sec­ond-sto­ry house win­dow type of view of the ocean, and a great view of the cities around you.”

Regent aims for the Viceroy seaglid­er to enter ser­vice by the end of 2025. The com­pa­ny is also devel­op­ing a 100-pas­sen­ger ver­sion dubbed the Monarch, that can car­ry 25,000 pounds of pay­load. It hopes to launch this larg­er craft into ser­vice by the end of 2028.

Regent says it has already attract­ed a back­log of USD7 bil­lion worth of orders for its seaglid­ers.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.regentcraft.com

(News Source: https://www.cnbc.com)

(Pics: regent/cnbc)

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