Hovercraft Luleå

Hovercraft Luleå

Hovercraft Frozen Sea Tour
A unique and magical way of exploring Luleå’s frozen archipelago on board a hovercraft. Nowhere else in Swedish Lapland is this experience available! Your 2.5-hour tour will include a journey across the ice and snow covered Bothnian Bay, between the islands. There is free time to walk on the ice and if you are lucky there is the chance of spotting a seal or sea eagles.
Note that the hovercraft carries a maximum of 5 guests.
Special conditions for hovercraft
Delays can occur due to unexpected situations due to harsh conditions. Cancellation of the tour can also occur. Some reasons for that are:
- Extreme cold (safe operation limit: 20 centigrade)
- Strong winds (safe operation limit: 10 m/s)
- Bad visibility due to fog or snowfall
- Rising ice or snow formations (obstacles too big to pass)
The customer will be informed of cancellations no later than 2 hours before the planned starting time. In these cases we will offer a new tour date OR give a full refund. In some conditions, alternative routes in safer/better areas are proposed to the customer. We will always try to give the customer the best experience! All our pilots are certified.

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Hovercraft Frozen Sea Tour at Brändön

Hovercraft History

Is it a boat or a plane? Back in 1959, when the world's first hovercraft floated out across the windy English Channel, people must have wondered exactly what they were seeing. Like a boat, a hovercraft moves across water, but like a plane, it also pushes through the air with the help of propellers. That is, a hovercraft can glide just as easily over water, land, or, ice. That makes it a perfect vehicle for getting round some of the world's most inaccessible areas—places where ordinary boats can't beach and planes can't land. How exactly does this unique and rather remarkable craft actually work? Let's take a closer look!

One part boat, one part airplane, and one part helicopter, a hovercraft is a vehicle that traps a cushion of air underneath itself and then floats along on top of it. The air cushion holds it high above waves and land obstructions, making the craft superbly amphibious (equally capable of traveling on land or water or gliding smoothly from one to the other).

Hovercraft come in all shapes and sizes, from one-person fun machines and small beach rescue craft to giant passenger ferries capable of carrying over 400 passengers and 50 cars. From ice and water to mud and sand, from floodplains and river deltas to mangrove swamps and frozen glaciers, the great advantage of a hovercraft is that it can glide with ease to places ordinary boats struggle to reach, and land people safely even where there are no harbors or landing stages.

In practice, hovercraft have four broad applications: large commercial hovercraft are mostly used as high-speed people and car ferries; slightly smaller military LCACs are used as tried-and-tested beach landing craft; smaller niche craft are used for things like oil and gas prospecting, inshore search and rescue, and scientific surveys.

In the Luleå archipelago the hovercraft is used to take local people out to the islands during that time of year when the ice is too thick to take a boat and to thin to drive over with a snowmobile. It is also used to take visitors to the region out to the nature of the Pack Ice in a unique and fun way.