China carries out test flight of world's first maritime ground-effect vehicle

Yeah I know of at least one company in the US already planning on doing this with passenger service.

The headline is bogus clickbait.

Yeah but you can't make Sino Number #1 propaganda if you include the others.

Perhaps they mean commercially produces ones. To my knowledge these have never gone past experimental prototype stages.

"I made this."

If I remember right the USSR had all kinds of strange for the time vessels designed and built for use in the Caspian and Sea of Asov.

true, but only as prototypes that never went into mass production

Ground effect vehicles are basically airplanes that are forced to fly really, really low. They take off from water and cruise just a few meters above the surface. At that altitude, the air gets compressed between the wing and the ground or water, which creates a huge cushion of extra lift. This lets the vehicle carry way more weight than a normal plane of the same size and power, making it incredibly efficient for hauling cargo over water. The trick is that it only works over flat surfaces like oceans or lakes, and the piloting can be tricky because you're skimming the waves at high speed without actually being able to climb to a higher altitude. It's a neat piece of engineering that trades operational flexibility for raw lifting power.

This was a fascinating read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-effect_vehicle