At a top speed of 290 km h 180 mph the Seaglider is supposed to achieve a range of 290 kilometers 180 miles twice as much as that of a comparable electric aircraft A little bit of air beneath the fuselage the closer to the surface a WIG craft flies the more efficient it is The Seaglider from U S manufacturer Regent is supposed to cost half as much as a comparable airplane and be six times faster than a ferry sank in 1980 after a pilot error The few WIG craft that were to succeed it can only be found in mu seums today Engineers in other countries pur sued the idea as well albeit a major commercial success has not materialized so far even though these wingships are epitomes of efficiency due to the ground effect they use As a result of this aerodynamic effect a rolling air cushion forms underneath the wings and the fuselage on which the WIG craft can ride in an energy saving way Another efficiency benefit is the fact that un like normal aircraft a WIG craft is not affected by wake turbulence In total the ground effect glid ing is supposed to be up to 40 percent more effi cient than flying at higher altitudes This inevitably raises the question why this princi ple has not caught on so far A decisive reason is that the higher the ground effect the lower the craft flies Altitudes of clearly less than one meter 3 ft are ideal in terms of efficiency Such low flying al titudes practically exclude the use of WIG craft on land which typically bristles with all kinds of obstacles But even water is not always perfectly N E W M O B I L I T Y 99

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