Hovering Ahead

The Hovercraft is becoming less of a novelty and more of a serious mode of transportation. A vehicle that skims on a cushion of air over land, ice or water, the Hovercraft carried 370,000 passengers on brief trips along the St. Lawrence River during Expo 67 and proved to be one of the fair's most popular attractions. Now it is being used for such diverse purposes as ferrying passengers between British coastal resort towns and hunting down Viet Cong in the swamps of the Mekong Delta.

Last week the so-called air-cushion vehicle (ACV) got its biggest commercial test when a 165-ton SR.N4, the world's largest Hovercraft, was introduced on regularly scheduled passenger runs across the English Channel between Dover and the French coastal city of Boulogne. The thrice daily round-trip crossings, which will be expanded to six starting this week, are of crucial importance to the British Hovercraft Corp., which builds the SR.N4. "Our necks are on the chopping block," admits Richard Stanton-Jones, managing director. "Potential buyers will be here watching and riding."

Among those watching the cross-channel undertaking most closely are Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Buffalo-based Bell Aerosystems Co. Both companies manufacture their own ACV versions, also serve as British Hovercraft licensees. The fledgling industry's leader, British Hovercraft, was formed in 1966 by Westland Aircraft Ltd., Vickers-Armstrongs Ltd., and the government-run National Research and Development Corp., which together have pumped $48 million into the craft's development.

Profits are still a long way off, but British Hovercraft is thinking big. Applying the hover principle to industry, the company is currently producing, mostly on an experimental basis, an air-cushion pallet called "Float-a-Load," which can be used to move industrial equipment weighing up to five tons. Its hopes are highest for the $4,000,000 SR.N4, whose potential market over the next ten years could exceed 100 orders if all goes well on its showcase channel crossings.

For the maiden voyage, the 250-passenger 30-car craft was about two-thirds filled as it whooshed over 3-ft. waves to Boulogne at 60 m.p.h. The trip was a mite noisy and bumpy, and passengers were further inconvenienced by the fact that the new service does not yet have direct railway links to either London or Paris. The British Railways Board, which operates the crossings, hopes to eliminate most of the kinks in the next few months. Despite an adult fare of $8.40, compared with $6.24 for a regular ferryboat, most of last week's travelers seemed more than satisfied.

The Hovercraft, after all, made the 26-mile crossing in just 35 minutes, nearly an hour less than the ferry's timetable.

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