90 years ago today: the end of British airship plans
Exactly 90 years ago, on 5 October 1930, R101, with a length of 237 m the longest airship of its time, crashed on its first flight from Cardington (UK) via Ismailia (Egypt) to Karachi in modern Pakistan.
The explosion near Beauvais (75 km north of Paris) killed 48 of the 54 people on board and effectively ended the imperial airship initiative that was intended to provide passenger and mail transport between the United Kingdom and its colonies.
It was planned that R101 and its sister ship R100, which had completed a successful flight to Canada in August that year, would transport up to 100 passengers as well as airmail and freight (with a payload of about 26 t).
But after the crash and because of the global economic crisis of the 1930s, all the government's airship plans were frozen – and the aircraft of Imperial Airways, which merged with British Airways in 1939, took up the baton. (ah)