Implications

Water-related themes dominate summer holidays. Waterside is also essential to the most popular pursuits associated with waterside hideaways, outback sports/camping gear, fishing gear, beach-towel/suncream/shades, flippers & snorkel and even shopping bags for down-town (the hearts of the majority of capital cities are adjacent to open water).

With the right form of aircraft all this can become accessible and bring much more value to pilots and aircraft ownership. Existing aircraft including landplanes, seaplanes and helicopters, can rarely deliver such value. Centaur Seaplane plc is destined to deliver exactly these capabilities.

Centaur Seaplane plc can offer the following major advantages over existing seaplanes:

1. Access to about five times as many coastal facilities

The wings can be folded to within the beam of the sponsons. Using a water-thruster to make control easy, it can go everywhere that yachts can go.

2. Operations in twice as large waves

Both a smooth ride in extreme waves and forgiving water handling qualities arise from the new hull forms.

3. Exceptionally high load capacity and payload range

New levels of hull efficiency combined with high aerodynamic lift and reduced engineering content in the hull enable substantially greater useful load capacity and range.

4. Superb on-water platform

The stub-wings provide for easy cabin access and a platform for all manner of on-water functions for work and recreation.

5. Exceptional safety

The Centaur's safety advantages include:

  • Greater safety margins in common wave conditions and survivability in extreme waves
  • Forgiving control response for ease of safe handling
  • Reduced wave-induced shock loading
  • Stability in crash cases including impacting submerged objects
  • Cabin that will not submerge in almost any water crash configuration
  • Safe pitching tendencies with changes in power and flap setting
  • Safe forced landing on sand, ploughed field, swamp, water etc.
  • High level of protection in a land crash due to disposable structure forward of cockpit

These are significant advantages over both landplanes and other seaplanes. They enable low-time pilots to make the transition to seaplanes in greater safety.

6. Lower operating costs

Major cost savings in relation to conventional seaplanes are expected from:

  • Low direct costs. Larger load capacity for given power enables most tasks with less than conventional fuel burn.
  • Low indirect costs. Major reductions in preventative and cyclical maintenance as a result of composite materials, especially when operating in salt water. With wings folded significant reductions in berthing/mooring/hangarage costs can be achieved.
  • Long airframe life. The Centaur 6's composite airframe is anticipated to last two to four times as long as equivalent aluminum airframes in salt water.
  • Lower insurance premiums. Favorable insurance premiums are expected as a result of the anticipated lower incident rate
  • Spreading overheads. Enabling operations in a wider range of conditions and to a wide range of new destinations, higher usage will spread fixed costs over more hours.

These advantages are expected to increase the competitiveness of fresh-water seaplane operations by at least 20 percent, and 40 percent on salt-water where life-cycled costs-per-seat-mile are expected to be in the order of half those encountered by operators of existing seaplanes.

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