Heavy-lift airship logistics · Canadian Shield

Heavy lift.
No roads required.

Flyweight Aerospace delivers 50-tonne cargo loads to remote mine sites using lighter-than-air aircraft. No runway, no road, no ice dependency. Year-round. At a fraction of current air freight cost.

Get in touch
50 t Payload capacity
~$800 Target CAD / tonne
0 Runway required
365 Days / year operational
The problem

Remote mine logistics is expensive, seasonal, and getting worse.

Ice roads in the Canadian Shield now operate roughly ten fewer days per decade due to warming temperatures. Mines that depend on them carry months of consumables on-site to hedge against late openings and early closures, at enormous inventory cost. When roads close unexpectedly, the only alternative is emergency air freight at rates that bear no relationship to actual transport economics.

$4,500–$7,500
CAD per tonne
Published scheduled air cargo rates for northern Canada. Emergency charter rates are higher. Flyweight's target delivery cost is ~$800/tonne.
8–10 weeks
Typical ice road season
A narrow, compressing window to move a full year's heavy consumables: fuel, explosives, reagents, large equipment.
$60M+
On-site inventory buffer
Reported on-site consumables stock at a single NWT diamond mine. Capital committed as a hedge against logistics failure.
The aircraft

Purpose-built for this mission.

Flyweight's aircraft is designed from first principles for Canadian Shield mine logistics. Not adapted from a military program or a passenger concept. Lighter-than-air buoyancy provides lift. Distributed diesel propulsion provides Arctic reliability. An active buoyancy management system enables full-payload delivery with no prepared surface and no ballast exchange at the destination site.

50 t
Payload
20× a Twin Otter. Equivalent to a Hercules load. No runway, no road, no prepared surface required.
~70 kts
Cruise speed
A 500 km delivery mission completes in under four hours each way.
−40 °C
Operating envelope
Cold, dense air increases buoyancy by ~24% relative to standard conditions. Winter is our highest-performance season.
Any surface
Landing requirement
Active buoyancy management eliminates the need for ballast exchange at delivery sites. A simple mooring mast is the only site infrastructure required.
The team

Built by people who have done this before.

The founding team combines aerospace engineering, systems integration, and commercial development experience across NASA research programs, aerospace prime contractors, lighter-than-air platforms, and prior venture-backed startups.

Founder & CEO
Aerospace Engineer
NASA research program background. Prior founding experience as CTO of a venture-backed commercial aerospace company (direct SBIR Phase II award). Patent holder in aerospace systems.
CTO
Systems Engineer
Aerospace prime contractor and commercial space program background. Systems integration experience across multiple flight hardware programs. Patent holder in aerospace systems.
CCO
Commercial Lead
Direct lighter-than-air platform development background. Aerospace and remote sensing industry experience. Revenue development focus across commercial aerospace and industrial sectors.
Contact

We're looking for early conversations.

Flyweight Aerospace is at the pre-commercial development stage. We are not selling a service yet. We are identifying mine operators who are willing to engage early, share their logistics constraints, and potentially sign a letter of intent in exchange for direct input into how the service is designed.

james@flyweightaero.com

We are happy to share our technical overview on request. Initial conversations are non-binding and confidential.