Airships: A Developmental Opportunity

Airship development is the surest, safest, and most effective path to the development of Canada’s northern territories.

At present, three modes of transportation dominate the logistics networks of the North: shipping, trucking, and airplanes. None of these provide reliable, affordable, year-round access to the goods and services needed to unlock the true potential of the region.

Airships circumvent the need for costly (and increasingly unreliable) ice-roads; fly over ice floes; and do not need airstrips. Permafrost is not a barrier to lighter-than-air flight.

From a sovereignty standpoint, cargo airships can bring pre-fabricated buildings and building material to locations otherwise inaccessible, to enable Canada to improve its strategic infrastructure and capacity for humanitarian aid in its territories. Furthermore, by enabling the development of nationally-acceptable living conditions and access to economic opportunity in the North, the region might begin to receive a substantial enough influx of newcomers to help validate its territorial claims more effectively on the world stage.

According to a landmark study funded by Transport Canada, the cost of a fleet of airships capable of servicing all current northern and isolated communities in the country would be $15 billion. This sounds like a large figure, until one realizes that this would only afford a single-lane, 300km gravel highway in the region--barely one quarter of the length from Yellowknife to Tuktoyaktuk. 

So, why hasn’t this already happened? We at Northern Dawn believe that industry has continually thought too big; trying to begin the airship industry in Canada through the introduction of ready-made, large-scale air freighters. However, such large projects are inevitably delayed by labour market shortages, regulatory ambiguity, and lack of popular support.

What Canada needs is proof that modern airships are capable of effectively meeting the needs of Northern communities, one step at a time. The first step of this process is, and must be visual.

Northern Dawn intends to provide this incremental proof-testing by starting commercial operations in the Foothills region of Alberta, creating the labour pool and industry conditions possible to introduce airships to the North. Instead of waiting for the ideal operating environment to appear, we intend to construct it.

The need for airships in the North is real—we just need momentum. Reach out today, and help Northern Dawn provide that momentum.