2 ms·

Sure, but why does that only benefit airships and not conventional airplanes?

• mananaysiempre 2y ago
  I don’t expect it will, I’m just surprised whenever my parcel shows it’s been cleared by customs before it has even left the origin country. (And that’s not a timezone bug, it’s explicitly described as a remote authorization, a preauthorization, or something like that.) Customs (partly) in software is not an absurd idea, was my point, I have no opinion on airships other than acknowledging their inherent coolness.
  • ErrantX 2y ago
    Manifest approvals has been a reality for a while. But that works because, not despite, the bottlenecks. Countries know goods must flow through certain choke points so they can essentially quality control the manifests. Remove that and pre-authorised customs will go again.
• yellowapple 2y ago
  Cargo planes require dedicated airports and runways and all that jazz, whereas the selling point of cargo airships seems to be to not need any of that; the article depicts one such airship handling a shipping container directly at a warehouse, for example. The need to go through some sort of customs process complicates things, but being able to put customs checkpoints further inland (closer to the end-destination) seems like it'd be appealing. My concern is around the space an airship takes up; coordinating traffic for maximum throughput is going to be a nightmare.