By Julie Fishman
Staff Writer

Imagine viewing Hawaii's volcanos, Egypt's pyramids, Alaska's glaciers or hosting a wedding in a luxury cruise ship that floats 1,500 feet above the earth.

A Greenwich company that operates and leases some of the world's largest airships is working to build a new luxury cruising blimp that may make all those scenarios possible.

Airship Management Services, best known for operating the FujiFilm blimp, teamed up with Skyship Cruise Ltd. of Lindau, Switzerland, to develop and manufacture a 30-passenger luxury airship. The two companies operate Skyship 600 blimps, which can carry up to 13 passengers.

The joint venture, known as Skycruiser Corp., purchased the Type A certificates of the Skyship 500 and 600 and Sentinel 1000 from Florida-based Global Skyship Industries, said William Armstrong, Airship Management Services' vice president of communications.

Company officials would not disclose the terms of the deal.

The blueprints are key to getting the project moving quickly. The new and bigger airship, which will be called SkyCruiser, will be based on the designs of the Skyship 600 and Sentinel 1000, said George Spyrou, president of Airship Management Services and Skycruiser Corp.

By using existing technology, getting Federal Aviation Administration approval will be much quicker, he said.

The SkyCruiser hails back to the days when passengers took grand transatlantic leisure trips on hydrogen-filled dirigibles. Unlike the Hindenburg days, airships are very safe with nonflammable helium replacing hydrogen.

Most blimps today adorn the skies as advertising tools, with the passenger rides usually tied to the promotional end of the business, Armstrong said.

The SkyCruiser will be designed for aerial touring and the initial plan is to operate in scenic places such as Mexico, Hawaii, Alaska, California, Florida, Brazil and Egypt, Spyrou said.

For example, a SkyCruiser blimp operating in Hawaii will do six to eight one-hour cruises a day, as well as a two- or three-hour sunset dinner cruise. The airship will also be available for private charters and special events such as cocktail parties, corporate events and weddings, he said.

Passengers will have the options of standing up, walking around and opening windows while being treated to a birds-eye view of some spectacular scenery, Spyrou said.

The gas envelope of the SkyCruiser will be about 220 feet long with the passenger-carrying gondola being about 55 feet long. The SkyCruiser will ascend to about 1,500 feet traveling at about 35 miles per hour, he said.

Spyrou said SkyCruiser Corp. hopes to initially build four or five airships, a project that will cost tens of millions of dollars.

Although Spyrou wouldn't disclose the exact projected cost of the venture, he said the company has already spent $15 million to develop the initial designs.

"If the Type Certificate is available, that means the technology can be reproduced pretty quickly," said Timothy H. Cole, executive vice president of Belvoir Publications, the Greenwich-based publisher of aviation periodicals.

Having the technology though, doesn't mean SkyCruise has the market to succeed, Cole said.

But Spyrou said he is confident there is market appeal for what his company is planning.

This past year, Skyship Cruise Ltd. began offering hour-long leisure cruises on the Skyship 600 in Switzerland for $300 per passenger. The flights were booked solid, he said.

Airship flights have also been a success for the Zeppelin Co., said Eric Brothers, editor of Buoyant Flight, the newsletter of The Lighter-Than-Air-Society in Akron, Ohio, which is the home of the Goodyear Blimp.

The Zeppelin Co., makers of the ill-fated Hindenburg, started operating the Zeppelin NT blimp last year with hour-long cruises across Lake Constance on the Swiss border for about $300 a passenger.

"It's pretty well booked up," Brothers said.

Further, he said, there is a pent-up demand for blimp rides in the United States.

Getting the SkyCruiser into the air is about 2 ½ years off, Spyrou said.

The new blimp is "a reasonable technological step up from where we are now," he said. "We've been in the business 20 years now, so we are comfortable we can do this."

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