How will you use the airship?
Y: There are uncharted areas of the sky map to which you can send your airship to investigate - this will raise the rank of your airship and strengthen it, and possibly bring back some items. In a later update, players themselves will be able to board the airship to go on adventures and discover islands.
The content of the airship system and exploring the sky map will be central to the patch 3.X series.
Tell us about its uses other than the sky map from the patch 3.X series.
Y:
Players will be able to ride on the airships to explore field areas based on the data they collected when they dispatched the ships.
Will there be islands that you can find that, for example, gatherers can enjoy?
Y:
Yes, there will be those kinds of islands, and there will be islands full of NMs you can subdue - we have a lot of ideas in mind.
Will the sky map areas be treated as so-called public fields?
Y: The term "public field" has been met with mixed reception so I'll avoid saying one way or the other, but we believe that we were able to make these encounters both random and surprising.
Can you give an example of something that might happen?
Y: Well,
you might go to a site that another free company has already investigated and find them in the midst of struggling against a giant monster (laughs).
As players share their research, it's likely that rare items won't stay rare for long.
Y: We wanted to include some elements of randomness. For example, you might have the parameters of your airship adjusted with the aim of reaching a certain island, but something might happen during your flight which forces you to make an emergency landing on another island (laughs).
So random elements will come into play.
Y: That's right. You'll be able to respond to those random elements with battleships that you can create in a future update. Earlier, we said we wanted to develop things like sky battles... taking your airship to the skies and the activities there is a major theme throughout the patch 3.X series.
Will members from outside the Free Company also be able to ride in the airship?
Y: Of course, players who aren't in the free company will be able to board the airships as "guests" or "mercenaries" to participate in searching the sky islands. We'll also have mechanisms implemented that leverage the party finder to recruit combatants, things like that.
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/125199-Famitsu-PAX-East-Interview-(3-14)-Translation