Zephyr One

For the Framework replica, see Zephyr One (Framework)

Zephyr One
Builder	Leo Fitz †
Owner	S.H.I.E.L.D. True Believers (alternate timeline, formerly)
Users	S.H.I.E.L.D. Hive †
Passengers	Joey Gutierrez Rosalind Price † Glenn Talbot Hellfire Ghost Rider Gabe Reyes Holden Radcliffe † Aida † Tony Caine Polly Hinton Robin Hinton Enoch
Prisoners	Giyera † Tucker Shockley Hale † Samuel Voss
Weapons	ASM missiles
Status	Active
Appearances
TV Series	Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Web Series	Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Slingshot

"Okay, people! What, you never seen the biggest plane ever built before?!"

―Piper to the May's Team^[src]

Zephyr One is a mobile airborne command plane designed by Leo Fitz for S.H.I.E.L.D., and its main aircraft and mobile headquarters, used as a replacement for the Bus after it was destroyed in the Attack on the Arctic HYDRA Research Facility.

History

Designed by Leo Fitz, Zephyr One was used after the War against the Inhumans. Zephyr One was used by Daisy Johnson, Alphonso Mackenzie, Lance Hunter, and Phil Coulson to extract a new inhuman and bring him to the Playground.

Phil Coulson contacted the Playground and ordered Mackenzie to use Zephyr One to transport the Monolith to a castle in England.

Melinda May called Coulson for reinforcements during the Attack on Grant Ward, who flew Zephyr One to his location along with a team of heavily armed S.H.I.E.L.D. agents., but were forced to divert to help Andrew Garner, who was being targeted by HYDRA.

May and Bobbi Morse later used Zephyr One in their search for Werner von Strucker in the hopes that he would lead them to Grant Ward. Their search took them from the Cayman Islands to Lisbon.

Director Phil Coulson used Zephyr One to travel to a high level, but completely off the books, meeting being chaired by President Ellis at NORAD in Colorado to discuss the future of enhanced people. His attendance was as a consultant to Rosalind Price of the ATCU. Before they could reach their destination, Zephyr One was boarded by Mackenzie and Lincoln Campbell, who had come with suspicions that Lash was working within S.H.I.E.L.D. Campbell's theory revolved around the murders of the Inhumans from Afterlife, whose locations were kept in Jiaying's ledger, which was confiscated by S.H.I.E.L.D. and given to Dr. Andrew Garner. Mackenzie also mentioned that May had looked up Garner's flight logs which coincided with the murders. Realizing that Garner is Lash, Coulson has Zephyr One divert to find him and May. After capturing Lash, S.H.I.E.L.D. agreed to hand him over to the ATCU to put him in stasis until a cure could be found.

Zephyr One later participated in Operation Spotlight to infiltrate the ATCU and find out their true intentions for Inhumans. After Garner's containment module sent a virus into their system, Agent Mackenzie intercepted Steve Wilson's call, posing as FBI cyber division, which enabled Bobbi Morse and Lance Hunter to infiltrate the facility. Johnson fed Hunter technical terminology to establish his cover as an IT specialist. May and Campbell then took a quinjet to await the agents' extraction. When Morse went further into the facility and found Nature Max Supplements Fish Oil pills and Terrigenesis cocoon, at the same time, Johnson had found records that the ATCU was purposely giving Terrigen to its employees and witnesses of Inhuman incidents to create more. Worse, Johnson finds that one of their employees, Giyera, was Inhuman, and contacted May and Campbell to initiate the extraction.

This section needs a rewrite

Following S.H.I.E.L.D.s relegitimization the Zephyr was used after the rogue Daisy Johnson who was attempting to stop the Watchdogs. Upon doing this she came across Robbie Reyes, aka the Ghost Rider. Zephyr One was present in preventing Ellias Marrow from causing the destruction of Los Angeles following Aida's attempt to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. through L.M.D.s. The Zephyr escaped the playground with the help of May, though the playground was destroyed. Following this, the agents spent ten days on Zephyr One until they found their missing friends, then they snuck back into the destroyed playground to refuel during Aida's rampage.

Confiscation and Reclamation

Due to S.H.I.E.L.D. still being labeled as a terrorist organization, the Zephyr One was seized by the United States Armed Forces, led by General Hale, and was kept in a storage facility at Blue Raven Ridge. However, the plane was later stolen by Leo Fitz and Lance Hunter, who used the aircraft to escape from Blue Raven Ridge which they had infiltrated in order to reclaim Enoch's Cryo-Freeze Chamber.

S.H.I.E.L.D. reclaims the Zephyr One

Fitz later showed his S.H.I.E.L.D. teammates, who had returned from year 2091, where he had left the plane so they could resume their missions in order to avert the Destruction of Earth. The team took the plane, once again piloted by Melinda May, to St. Louis in order to inspect an aerospace facility. They later used the plane to retreat as they had been attacked by a group of Sleeper Mechs, which had caused Yo-Yo Rodriguez to lose her arms. The plane was taken to the Lighthouse, using the base's landing ground.

The Zephyr One hovers over the Principia

S.H.I.E.L.D. later had Tony Caine come aboard the Zephyr One so he could tell them more about Joseph Getty, who could lead them to a cargo of Gravitonium. Using intel provided by Getty and used by Fitz, Jemma Simmons and Deke Shaw, S.H.I.E.L.D. used the Zephyr One to find the flying boat Principia. Once they located the ship, the Zephyr One remained hovering over it while a team went to inspect the ship thanks to the plane's Containment Module. They then safely returned and the Zephyr One was taken back to the Lighthouse while the Principia fell back into the sea.

Hale's car is taken into the cloaked Zephyr One

Phil Coulson and May later used the Zephyr One's cloaking to successfully capture Hale. They took her into an interrogation room in the plane, but while Coulson discussed with Hale, May realized that her driver they had captured as well was Carl Creel, who threatened to blow up the plane with a bomb belt. The Zephyr One was then approached by a Quinjet transporting Anton Ivanov, who boarded the aircraft. Coulson was then forced to leave the Zephyr One to go with Hale, Creel, and Ivanov.

In an attempt to find Coulson, Daisy Johnson and May took the Zephyr One near the Retreat, where Robin Hinton was hiding with her mother Polly. The Hintons were taken to the Zephyr One, where May found one of Robin's drawings which could indicate the whereabouts of Coulson in a mountainous region. Davis landed the plane near the supposed location of Coulson, who was successfully rescued by the team. However, Shaw was heavily wounded in the battle against HYDRA, and nearly died during the flight back to the Lighthouse.

The Zephyr One lands at the HYDRA Herefordshire Facility

Johnson and May later took the Zephyr One in order to attack the HYDRA Preparatory Academy. They got into the plane's Containment Module, which was projected to the ground while Agent Thomas fired a missile at the Academy to initiate the attack. After Hale surrendered, she joined May and Johnson in the Zephyr One, which was taken to the HYDRA Herefordshire Facility. Following the battle there, the Zephyr One returned to the Lighthouse.

The cloaked Zephyr One docks to Qovas' Ship

In order to get the Hintons and Creel, who had been rescued from HYDRA by S.H.I.E.L.D., into safety, Johnson took the Zephyr One away from the Lighthouse shortly before the Siege of the Lighthouse. As Coulson and Talbot had gone missing in the aftermath of the siege due to having boarded Qovas' Ship, the Zephyr One was upgraded by Alphonso Mackenzie with RCS thrusters designed by Fitz. This enabled the Zephyr One to be taken into space, piloted by May and Davis. Using the plane's cloaking, they docked to Qovas' Ship so that May and Johnson could infiltrate it.

During the mission, Shaw remained in the Zephyr One with Agent Davis and Kim. However, the plane was attacked by Glenn Talbot, who murdered Kim while Shaw and Davis hid and watched in horror. Talbot then walked through the plane and stole the Quinjet which was docked to it. Shaw left to rescue his friends, leaving Davis in the plane which was then attacked by a group of Remorath soldiers. Coulson and Johnson, who had escaped from Qovas' spaceship, defeated them and asked Davis to take them back to the Lighthouse. However, during the flight, Coulson fainted due to his condition.

The Zephyr One leaves for Chicago

When Talbot was spotted in Chicago, the Zephyr One left the Lighthouse one last time with the full S.H.I.E.L.D. team onboard in order to go and put an end to the Gravitonium threat. During the flight, Johnson gathered the team she had been asked to lead and admitted that she was not up to the task, instead appointing Mackenzie as the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. The plane then arrived in Chicago, and was soon used to help evacuate the civilians fleeing the battle against Talbot. Once at full capacity, the Zephyr One was taken into the air.

The plate put in the plane in honor of Phil Coulson

Davis later returned to the plane as well with an unconscious Coulson, who had refused to take the Centipede Serum crafted to cure him. Although the situation seemed desperate, Rodriguez was able to reanimate Coulson at the end of the Battle of Chicago. In the aftermath of the battle, with Coulson deciding to retire from S.H.I.E.L.D., the team put a commemorative plate in the plane. They then brought Coulson to Tahiti, where he would enjoy the few days he had left with May, while the rest of the team left to find the version of Fitz who was frozen in space.

Alternate Timeline

The remnants of the Zephyr One as the True Believers' base

In the timeline when the Earth was destroyed, the Zephyr One, upgraded with Gravitonium-based thrusters, was used by a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, including Melinda May, to evacuate as many civilians as possible to the Lighthouse. When the Earth was finally destroyed, the remnants of the Zephyr One were stuck on the ground. Years later, the plane was used as a base of operations by the True Believers, a group of people who believed that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents would come from the past to liberate the Humans from the rule of the Kree Watch. As the prophecy began to come true, Melinda May was taken to the Zephyr One, soon followed bu the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

Although the True Believers and S.H.I.E.L.D. initially seemed to collaborate, the True Believers ultimately turned on S.H.I.E.L.D. as they wanted to kill Daisy Johnson. This caused a fight in the plane, which led to the death of Robin Hinton and the imprisonment of the True Believers as the plane took over the plane.

S.H.I.E.L.D. decided to repair the plane in order to return into the Lighthouse. Although they were not completely successful in their task, they decided to use the RCS thrusters found in the plane by Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons in combination with a gravity storm so that they could fly into space. Despite the high risks, and the fact that Sinara had infiltrated the plane while hunting down the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, the mission was successful and the aircraft managed to return to the Lighthouse.

While the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents infiltrated the Lighthouse, a group of Kree Watch guards led by Kasius found the empty plane with the body of Sinara. Only Enoch had remained in the plane to ensure the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents' escape through the White Monolith. Enoch was eventually found by a Kree guard, but he was saved by Deke Shaw who had returned to the plane to help him. Despite the damaged caused to the machine intended to use the White Monolith, Enoch and Shaw managed to activate it by powering it with Enoch's inner battery, successfully returning the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents back into their time. As for the Zephyr One, it was destroyed in the resulting explosion.

Capabilities

"This new aircraft can stay in the air much longer than the old plane, days really, so rapid response anywhere..."
"You love your new toy, don't you?"
"I very much love my new toy..."

―Phil Coulson and Daisy Johnson^[src]

Landing Bay

Zephyr One has been designed to incorporate a landing bay for Quinjets on the dorsal surface and has been observed to allow at least two to land at any given time. The plane has been adapted to carry Containment Modules on board, that can be sent to specific locations indicated by a tracking device planted on the ground then use jets on the bottom to fly back up to the plane. Aside from some windows, the interior of these pods is made from "poly-tectic adaptive materials" that can withstand some superhuman powers, and is customized by use. These pods can be transferred into at least one larger holding cell made from similar material for storage purposes.

Weapons Systems

Zephyr One has a vast array of missiles that is capable of leveling the Castle, as it is seen firing three of them at the Castle, destroying most of the standing structure.

Stealth Systems

Zephyr One has implemented the same cloaking technology as other S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft.

Flight Systems

Zephyr One is able to stay in the air for days if needed, much longer than the Bus, allowing for a greater range and flight time before having to set down for refueling. During a deployment, Zephyr One stayed in the air for six weeks before being recalled. Even with the Framework eating through its power reserves for at least ten days, the plane was able to stay in the air, albeit with an increasing number of nonessential systems disabled.

Due to its engine design, Zephyr One is capable of entering seemingly dangerous angles without stalling. A particularly skilled pilot can even enter these angles during launch, allowing the plane to squeeze through openings that could not accommodate it otherwise. This proved necessary after Daisy Johnson's Escape from the Playground, as the hangar doors were unable to open completely due to damage inflicted by a Hive-controlled Johnson.

The plane's autopilot is capable of automatically chaining altitude angle and course as demonstrated when Melinda May did this is to stay away from Aida.

Space Ship

The Zephyr One teleports through space

"Guess we just built S.H.I.E.L.D.'s first spaceship."

―Leo Fitz^[src]

In an attempt to send a bulk of Gravitonium into the sun, the Zephyr One was equipped with new Gravitonium-based RCS thrusters designed by Leo Fitz so that the plane could be taken and maneuvered in space after being put in a vertical position. Although the initial plan was canceled due to Glenn Talbot having infused himself with the Gravitonium, the Zephyr One's new thrusters were used by S.H.I.E.L.D. for a space mission in order to rescue Phil Coulson in Qovas' Ship. The spaceship capabilities would also be used in order to find the version of Fitz who was frozen in space in Enoch's Cryo-Freeze Chamber. Now when combined with the alien teleporter, they were able to upgrade its space capabilities where they can travel instantly to different star system.

Trivia

• Mark Kolpack, the visual effects supervisor for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., said "The Zephyr One is inspired by a mixture of a Romulan Bird-of-Prey with a Godzilla head shape."