R101 would generate favourable publicity for the airship programme. The final trial flight of R101 was originally scheduled for 26 September 1930, but high winds delayed the move from the shed until 1 October. That evening, R101 slipped the mast for its only trial flight before setting off for India. This lasted 16 hours 51 minutes and was undertaken under near-ideal weather conditions; because of the failure of the oil cooler in one engine, it was not possible to carry out full speed trials. The flight was curtailed because of the need to prepare the airship for the flight to India.
R101 famous for the geodetic framework of the Wellington bomber and for the bouncing bomb. His principal assistant (the "Chief Calculator"), Nevil Shute Norway, later well known as the novelist Nevil Shute, much later gave his account of the design and construction of the two airships in his autobiography, "", first published in 1954. Shute's book characterises R100 as a pragmatic and conservative design, and R101 as extravagant and over-ambitious, but one purpose of having two design teams was to test different approaches, with R101 deliberately intended to extend the limits of existing technology. According to Masefield, Shute later admitted that