Cushioncraft Ltd was a British engineering company, formed in 1960 as a division[1] of Britten-Norman Ltd (manufacturer of aircraft) to develop/build hovercraft.
These investigations revealed the possibility of a break-through in transportation techniques by the use of air cushion vehicles which could accelerate the pace of development in territories where roads are nonexistent and costly to build and rivers are seasonally unnavigable[4] Cushioncraft was reconstituted as a separate company in 1967 to permit British Hovercraft Corporation (BHC) to take a minority share holding, and it revived the name under which Britten-Norman's initial ACV endeavours were launched.
In 1971, Britten-Norman encountered financial problems, and one result was that the Cushioncraft company was sold in 1972 to the British Hovercraft Corporation.
Subsequent to development use by Cushioncraft, the CC4 was sold to the National Physical Laboratory for future research, HDL renamed it HU-4.
This was to be a small vehicle/passenger craft (4 to 6 cars and 30 to 40 passengers) using the quiet centrifugal fan configuration for lift and propulsion developed from the CC4 and CC5.
The Cushioncraft CC-6 18-ton mixed-traffic ferry craft was to be built jointly by the Vosper Thorneycroft shipbuilding group at Portsmouth.
The CC7 was a development of the CC5, built in aluminium with inflatable side decks - the first Cushioncraft to use a gas turbine engine (all previous being piston).