In logistics and military terminology:
An airlift is the act of transporting people or cargo from point to point using aircraft. This can be as ordinary as transporting televisions from one airport to another, or as extraordinary as the Berlin Airlift.
See also: Strategic airlift, tactical airlift.
In diving terminology:
An Airlift is an item of diving equipment, based on a pipe, used in nautical archaeology to suck small objects, sand and mud from the sea bed and to transport the resulting debris upwards and away from its source.
Typically the air lift is constructed from a 3 metre to 10 metre long, 10 cm diameter pipe. A controllable compressed air supply vents into the inside, lower end of the pipe. The input end is always the lower end. Compressed air is injected into the pipe in one to three second bursts with an interval long enough to allow the resulting bubble to rise to the higher, output end of the pipe. The bubble moves water through the pipe sucking debris from the lower end and depositing it from the upper end of the pipe.
