Eviation & Vertical display aircraft, 2 podcasts & more (The Allplane Newsletter #70)
This week marks the return of the podcast with two new episodes:
Frédéric Aguettant, founder of Helipass, tells us how is it like to build a leading marketplace for helicopter rides and how this leading digital marketplace for helicopter services is preparing for the advent of the eVTOL era.
Weather and aviation, with Victor de los Santos. This is our 50th episode and the first of a 4-part series done in collaboration with SITA for Aircraft, a major aviation technology firm with a suite of solutions to make flying more efficient. Victor is product manager for eWAS Pilot, a software package that helps pilots fly more efficiently in all sort of weather conditions. Listen to this episode here.
Sustainable Aviation News
The Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) has come up with its own proposal for a hydrogen-powered long-haul airliner. At this point a rather distant dream (and a technological choice that is contested by some industry analysts)
Airbus will create a third Zero Emission Development Center (ZEDC) in Spain through its UpNext subsidiary. These centers, of which there are already two in Nantes (France) and Bremen (Germany), research different technologies that can contribute to the decarbonization of aviation. The Spanish one will focus on carbon fiber composite fuel tanks for the much-touted future hydrogen airliners.
And precisely this week, Airbus has published this short explanation of why storage tanks are such a key element of the hydrogen-powered airliner promise (basically, hydrogen has high energy density but it takes lots of volume!)
An interim report by Project Napkin (which stands for “New Aviation Propulsion Knowledge and Innovation Network”), a consortium of UK firms and academic institutions (Heathrow airport, Rolls-Royce and Cranfield University among them) that are evaluating different scenarios for the introduction of hydrogen-powered flight in the UK. Not hiding the scale of the challenge: the concepts explored cover only 10% of emissions from UK domestic flights (themselves a small fraction of the total air traffic in Britain). You can read it here.
McKinsey has put together this webpage gathering quite a few resources that condense the consultancy firm’s thoughts about the emergence of the Advanced Air Mobility industry. Or you can also listen to our podcast with McKinsey partner Robin Riedel about this very same topic.
If you’ve read this far, you are already aware of the fact that eVTOL projects come in all shapes and sizes, but pretty much all of them rely on batteries. How realistic are they when one takes into account the current state of battery technology and the promises these startups have made to their investors and the public? This visual post analyzes it.
Eviation has been showing the first prototype of its Alice aircraft as well as offering some glimpses of the cabin. As sleek in the inside as it is in the outside!
And Vertical Aerospace also showed its very sleek VX4 eVTOL ahead of its planned stockmarket listing this 16th December. Here is the one minute video.
The Kvarken region of northern Scandinavia (an area that spans Sweden and Finland and, for some purposes, stretches all the way into Norway) may be one of the first parts of the world to see real use of electric aircraft. I wrote about this cross-border initiative here, now there is also this report providing some comparisons between electric aviation and other modes of transportation.
Also in Scandinavia, Heart Aerospace, one of the most promising ventures in the field of electric flying, has selected Garmin to supply the flight deck for its up and coming ES-19 aircraft.
Garmin has developed some really interesting tech for the aviation industry. In fact, in what turned out to be one of my last trips before the pandemic, I had the chance to visit their HQ in Kansas and test the impressive Garmin Autoland system (integrated in the G3000 suite selected by Heart Aerospace) that is able to perform automated landings at the nearest airport in case the pilot becomes incapacitated during flight. Here is the piece I wrote back then for AirInsight.
Etihad has launched what they claim is the first green loyalty programme in the airline industry. Members will be able to get miles by engaging in different sorts of sustainability-friendly choices when booking flights with the Abu Dhabi-based airline.
Shell and Deloitte have published an excellent report on the perspectives for the decarbonization of aviation
What else in “traditional” aviation?
Norse Atlantic Airways shared some images of their first Boeing 787 in flight. The new airline of former Norwegian CEO Bjorn Kjos is expected to launch soon.
The first Airbus A321XLR is already being assembled in Hamburg.
In case you missed it, last month I published two aviation-themed articles on CNN:
Airports that are international in the literal sense of the word…because they sit on an international border line.
How Barcelona-based Buildair has developed a technology to build huge inflatable hangars, capable of hosting airliners the size of an Airbus A330, in just a matter of hours.