Ah. Balthier's beauty, the airship dubbed The Strahl. What would a sky pirate be without a ship to fly, after all. In German strahl means beam, ray and radiancy. This would refer to her speed and beauty, shining as she sails across the skies.

The strahl contains one or two interesting gadgets, we would probably see more if the party didn't have to travel afoot so often. For one she can be made invisible, so that no uninvited guests should come while the duo is away as Balthier himself put it, probably thinking mainly about the bountyhunters coming after his head.
The second gadget is a voiceimitation-device, which Balthier uses on Ashe as she's trying to figure out how his ship works, so she can "borrow" it.

In the game's bestiary section under different foe's you can find something called Sage Knowledge, which tells us additional imformation about places and objects in Ivalice. Sage Knowledge #21, under the foe #54 Wyvern, is about the Strahl! It reads;

"The Strahl Airship designed and built by YPA, a shipwright's guild of Archades. Officially named YPA-GB47 Test Combat Fighter, production was halted after the completion of a single test model due to dissatisfaction on the part of the Imperial customer with the costly dual-movable-wing design. Scheduled for scrapping, Balthier liberated the ship at the last moment. Balthier has since modified the Strahl with a new engine and numerous other augmentations, making it a very different ship from the one envisioned by its YPA inventors."

So basically Balthier saved her life and has since made her his own. He surely takes pride in his Strahl!
Another little fellow who's also very proud to be associated with this airship is Nono, the moogle mechanic. Moogles are actually behind the making of airships in FFXII! Late in the game when you finally get to use the Strahl as transportation instead of the golden save crystals, there is this message from Nono as the party's looking to board; "From the aerodrome to the desert wastes, I'll be there to keep the Strahl in tip-top shape, kupo!"

He's a very sweet moogle and proud of his work!
Nono actually makes his first appearance in Final Fantasy: Tactics Advance for Gameboy Advance. He is of the Gadgeteer workclass, by the look of the overall, and has his very own airship on which he runs a merchant shop. In FFTA Nono is also the younger brother of Montblanc, the clan Centurio lead moogle in FFXII.

This beautifully designed vehicle unfortunatly never made it past the introduction of the sky pirate duo. Shortly after it began malfunctioning and basically disappeared. It's a shame, because it was screaming pimpage! As seen in the early FMV-sequences and official art, Balthier just sits in the back and can overlook Fran as she leans forward holding the wheels. Of course, he's probably meant to serve as an offense back there, with his sharpshooting skills.

As fun trivia, let's take a look at the airship which Balthier DOESN'T want to be seen in. As the party made their escape from the Leviathan, they had to get out of there on an airship called The Atomos. Balthier was not pleased, leaving the following words;

"An Atomos? All skiff, no ship. Hardly fit for a leading man!"

The Atomos, like many other Imperial airships in FFXII, is named after a summon from the past Final Fantasy games. Atomos appears as both summon(in FFIX) and an enemy(In FFI and FFV). Atomos is also the name of a Rank III Mark in FFXII, a Mutant Slavern.

In a way it does resemble the good old summon/foe. Just like the summon was one big gaping mouth and not much else, the airships front resembles just that.

Take a look at this picture of Atomos from FFI to compare! ^^