Background
AMS was a private company founded in 1990, [1] based in Greenwich, Connecticut, with a maintenance facility and FAA Repair Station in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
Clients in the United States have included Ameriquest, the New York City Police Department and Fujifilm (USA) Inc., which used a Skyship 600 type airship in the US since 1984, starting with the Los Angeles Summer Olympics. A Sky-ship was also used over the Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea in 1988 and the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. In addition, AMS provided two Sky-ships for use over the Athens Olympics in 2004, [2] one for use by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and the Hellenic Police in Greece, and the other for broadcasting by NBC TV.
Since 1980, fifteen Sky-ships were designed, built, and operated around the world for such customers as Japan Airlines, the Korean Sports Foundation, Fuji film, the Tokyo Police, Citibank, the French Ministry of the Interior, and Pepsi-Cola. In addition, “Sky-cruises” (passenger tours) operated over London, Paris, Munich, Sydney, Melbourne, Switzerland and San Francisco. [3]
A Sky-ship was used for a tour across Europe during 2006, from London to Paris to Rome to Athens, promoting The Palm Islands project in Dubai, United Arab Emirates [4]
Roles
Airships have been used not only as advertising and promotional vehicles and for the carriage of passengers, but also as television camera platforms, broadcast relay stations and as surveillance vehicles from which various sensors can be operated. AMS developed these applications with numerous clients, including Westinghouse, Northrop Grumman, the U.S. Navy, [5] Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Army, the British Ministry of Defence, [6] the NYPD's Counterterrorism Division (for security surveillance), and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) for environmental surveys.
During the 2008 GOP Presidential Primary, AMS operated the Ron Paul Blimp.
One Sky-ship, Santos-Dumont (named for Alberto Santos-Dumont), was used to operate in the Caribbean for the Special Anti-Crime Unit of Trinidad & Tobago (SAUTT) providing security surveillance. During April 2009, this ship provided aerial surveillance over the 5th Summit of the Americas in Port-of-Spain. [7]
A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is an airship (dirigible) without an internal structural framework or a keel. Unlike semi-rigid and rigid airships, blimps rely on the pressure of the lifting gas inside the envelope and the strength of the envelope itself to maintain their shape.
An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air.
The Zeppelin NT is a class of helium-filled airships being manufactured since the 1990s by the German company Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH (ZLT) in Friedrichshafen. The initial model is the N07. The company considers itself the successor of the companies founded by Ferdinand von Zeppelin which constructed and operated the very successful Zeppelin airships in the first third of the 20th century. There are, however, a number of notable differences between the Zeppelin NT and original Zeppelins as well as between the Zeppelin NT and usual non-rigid airships known as blimps. The Zeppelin NT is classified as a semi-rigid airship.
Police aviation is the use of aircraft in police operations. Police services commonly use aircraft for traffic control, ground support, search and rescue, high-speed car pursuits, observation, air patrol and control of large-scale public events and/or public order incidents. They may employ rotary-wing aircraft, fixed-wing aircraft, nonrigid-wing aircraft or lighter-than-air aircraft. In some major cities, police rotary-wing aircraft are also used as air transportation for personnel belonging to SWAT-style units. In large, sparsely populated areas, fixed-wing aircraft are sometimes used to transport personnel and equipment.
A hybrid airship is a powered aircraft that obtains some of its lift as a lighter-than-air (LTA) airship and some from aerodynamic lift as a heavier-than-air aerodyne.
The Goodyear Blimp is any one of a fleet of airships operated by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, used mainly for advertising purposes and capturing aerial views of live sporting events for television. The term blimp itself is defined as a non-rigid airship—without any internal structure, the pressure of lifting gas within the airship envelope maintains the vessel's shape.
The K-class blimp was a class of blimps built by the Goodyear Aircraft Company of Akron, Ohio for the United States Navy. These blimps were powered by two Pratt & Whitney Wasp nine-cylinder radial air-cooled engines, each mounted on twin-strut outriggers, one per side of the control car that hung under the envelope. Before and during World War II, 134 K-class blimps were built and configured for patrol and anti-submarine warfare operations, and were extensively used in the Navy’s anti-submarine efforts in the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean areas.
The L-class blimps were training airships operated by the United States Navy during World War II. In the mid-1930s, the Goodyear Aircraft Company built a family of small non-rigid airships that the company used for advertising the Goodyear name. In 1937 the United States Navy awarded a contract for two different airships, K-class blimp designated K-2 and a smaller blimp based upon Goodyear's smaller commercial model airship used for advertising and passenger carrying. The smaller blimp was designated by the Navy as L-1. It was delivered in April 1938 and operated from the Navy's lighter-than-air facility at Lakehurst, New Jersey. In the meantime, the Navy ordered two more L-Class blimps, the L-2 and L-3, on September 25, 1940. These were delivered in 1941. L-2 was lost in a nighttime mid-air collision with the G-1 on June 8, 1942.
21st Century Airships Inc. was a Canadian airship technologies research and development company. These projects included the development of a spherical shaped airship as well as airships for high altitude, environmental research, surveillance and military applications, heavy lifting and sightseeing.
The Airship Industries Skyship 600 is a modern airship, originally designed by British company Airship Industries, further developed by a subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. The type certificate holder is now Skyship Services of Orlando, Florida.
Beginning in 1908 and ending in 1937, the U.S. Army established a program to operate airships. With the exceptions of the Italian-built Roma and the Goodyear RS-1, which were both semi-rigid, all Army airships were non-rigid blimps. These airships were used primarily for search and patrol operations in support of coastal fortifications and border patrol. During the 1920s, the Army operated many more blimps than the U.S. Navy. Blimps were selected by the Army because they were not seen as "threats" on the battlefield by opposing forces, unlike airplanes, due to their passive role in combat.
George Andrew Rankin Spyrou was a Scottish businessman. Spyrou was the president of Airship Management Services (AMS) and had affiliations with other airship companies.
Worldwide Aeros Corp is an American manufacturer of airships based in Montebello, California. It was founded in 1993 by the current CEO and Chief Engineer, Igor Pasternak, who was born in Soviet Kazakhstan, raised in Soviet Ukraine, and moved to the U.S. after the Soviet collapse to build airships there. It currently employs more than 100 workers.
A mooring mast, or mooring tower, is a structure designed to allow for the docking of an airship outside of an airship hangar or similar structure. More specifically, a mooring mast is a mast or tower that contains a fitting on its top that allows for the bow of the airship to attach its mooring line to the structure. When it is not necessary or convenient to put an airship into its hangar between flights, airships can be moored on the surface of land or water, in the air to one or more wires, or to a mooring mast. After their development mooring masts became the standard approach to mooring airships as considerable manhandling was avoided.
Airship Industries was a British manufacturers of modern non-rigid airships (blimps) active under that name from 1980 to 1990 and controlled for part of that time by Alan Bond. The first company, Aerospace Developments, was founded in 1970, and a successor, Hybrid Air Vehicles, remains active as of 2022. Airship Industries itself was active between 1980 and 1990.
American Blimp Corporation (ABC) is an American privately owned Hillsboro, Oregon-based company that is the largest manufacturer of blimps in the United States. It manufactures the hardware and rigging for the Lightship and Spector brands of airships. In 2012, American Blimp Corporation and The Lightship Group were acquired by Van Wagner Communications LLC, and became referred to as the Van Wagner Airship Group. On November 17, 2017, the Florida-based AirSign Inc. purchased the American Blimp Corporation and the Van Wagner Airship Group. In additional to getting 15 airships in the acquisition, AirSign also purchased the A-170 airship (MZ-3A) from the U.S. Navy. With ownership and management of Van Wagner's global airship operations, including staff with decades of experience in the airship industry, AirSign became as the world's largest airship company.
The Hybrid Air Vehicles Airlander 10 is a hybrid airship designed and built by British manufacturer Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV). Comprising a helium airship with auxiliary wing and tail surfaces, it flies using both aerostatic and aerodynamic lift and is powered by four diesel engine-driven ducted propellers.
The Skyship 500 is a non-rigid airship designed and built in the United Kingdom during the 1980s.
