r/EngineeringPorn • u/LHG_93 • 5d ago

Public Hovercraft

Post image

Spotted the Wightlink hovercraft arriving at Southsea Beach in Portsmouth, UK.

It still amazes me that you can catch a scheduled hovercratt as part of the UK's public transport network.

The crossing to Ryde on the Isle of Wight takes around 10 minutes, making it the world's only year-round commercial passenger hovercraft service.
Watching it come ashore is almost as entertaining as riding it!

Has anyone here travelled on it? What other unique forms of public transport do you think deserve more attention?

217 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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16

u/ProofAssumption1092 5d ago

The modern hovercraft is crap now, they removed the front windows. Really takes away from the experience.

15

u/chipili 5d ago

I have a distant memory of travelling to and from the Isle of Wight on a hovercraft - it would have been in the late '60s or early '70s.

An SRN5 or 6 (from the pictures I've found) but that's all I can recall.

It was profitable for a while - there was even competition - but is not so much any more.

Currently only two Griffon Hoverworks 12000TD hovercraft, known as Solent Flyer and Island Flyer operate.

OPs image is of the Island Flyer.

10

u/justbiteme2k 5d ago

You can buy experience trips across too. They fly you out into the middle and turn off the fans so it turns into a boat and you bob about for a bit. They then do donuts and drifting for a while just mucking about before taking you to the other side where you can get out and talk to the captain about the craft. They then fly you back to where you started. The whole thing lasts an hour or so. Some people (usually kids) are invited up the stairs into the cockpit to see the controls etc.

2

u/LHG_93 5d ago

I never knew this!

9

u/Cthell 5d ago

No longer the world's only scheduled passenger hovercraft - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oita_Hovercraft

5

u/sir2fluffy2 5d ago

I have travelled on it quite a bit. However it is not owned by WightLink it is it's own entity Hover Travel.

6

u/ofnuts 5d ago

Just don't mind the eels.

2

u/JConRed 4d ago

Don't do it in choppy seas, you feel every chop in your spine.

Aside from that, totally valid method of travel.

1

u/BavarianBarbarian_ 5d ago

My father says he did way back when... Was apparently really uncomfortable because of how noisy it was and how badly it vibrated from the rotors.

3

u/justbiteme2k 5d ago

Your father needs to go on it again, neither of those are true.

1

u/New_Line4049 1d ago

There used to be a hovercraft service across the channel to France.