Aviation News Recap (Allplane Newsletter #52)
Podcast of the week
Petar Vojinovic is the founder and CEO of Tango Six, the top aviation news site in Serbia and organizer of the South East Europe Aviation Summit, the main aviation conference in the Balkans. In this episode of the podcast, we review, together with Petar, the fascinating history of commercial aviation in this often underreported part of Europe.
Did you know Serbia has one of the oldest airlines in the world? that JAT, the flag carrier of the former Yugoslavia was flying the most advanced jets at the peak of the Cold War? or how Air Serbia became Etihad’s flagship project in Europe? We talk about all of this and much more…
Green aviation news
This week has been absolutely packed with major news concerning the eVTOL industry, so we shall start here:
What a week for Vertical Aerospace!
The UK-based eVTOL company has announced a whole set of news each one of which would make big headlines on its own. Let’s recap:
500-strong order from aircraft leasing company Avolon, the largest single order ever in the eVTOL world
Aerospace giant Honeywell announced it is going to supply avionics and fly-by-wire systems for Lilium’s new 7 seater aircraft AND is also going to become an investor in the German eVTOL and electric flight company
Honeywell is also partnering with Denso, of Japan, to develop electric propulsion technologies. Denso roots are in the automotive industry, another example of the interesting convergence of car makers and aerospace industries brought about by electrification (as noted in this article about “flying cars” that I published on CNN)
By the way, Lilium is setting up its first American vertiport in Orlando, Florida!
Not even one week after announcing its first major 200-strong order, Embraer’s UAM arm Eve closed another major deal, this one for 50 eVTOLs from Brazilian helicopter operator Helisul.
Reminder that Brazil, and the megalopolis of Sao Paulo in particular, are among the largest markets for intra-urban helicopter travel, so I guess eVTOLs will prove popular here too.
Archer has unveiled the “Maker”, a two-seater eVTOL demonstrator.
A glimpse of the upcoming electric and eVTOL future, beautiful videos by Joby Aviation, showing, first, its aircraft in flight
And, next, this simulator footage that shows how is it like to pilot one of these machines:
Moving into Electric Flight Land…
Alaskan airline Ravn (which has made a comeback after we included in our list of 2020 airline demises) has signed a letter of intent for 50 Airflow eSTOL aircraft. It aims to serve its network of remote, small communities across the big northern state with this electric aircraft from 2025.
Pipistrel is working on a 19-seater aircraft for regional travel. It will be feature a hydrogen fuel cell and be capable of covering routes in the 200 to 1000km range and land in 800m runways, even in grass airfields!
To learn more about Slovenian electric aircraft maker Pipistrel, check out also the podcast we did with its founder, Ivo Boscarol
Yet another startup in the short-to-medium haul electric STOL segment to present its concept. This one is the aptly named Electra, founded in 2020 and based in the US East Coast.
Picture: Electra
Interesting piece about the advent of electric aviation featuring pioneering electric seaplane operator Harbour Air and two of its partners in this endeavour, both have been in the Allplane podcast: magniX and H55.
Distributed power is one of the technologies made possible by electric propulsion. Airbus shows us in this VIDEO how it tests it in a wind tunnel.
McKinsey on how many regional airports are underused but this could change with new forms of air mobility. Read it here.
Department of Alternative Aviation Fuels
Major news also in this front:
Airbus announced that, together with a bunch of really prominent partners (Safran, Schenider Electric, Dassault Aviation, French aerospace research institute ONERA and the French Ministry of Transports) it is starting tests of 100% SAF flight on an Airbus A320, already before the end of this year. This type of tests were already underway in wide-body aircraft such as the A350, but, still, narrow bodies like the A320 are the workhorse of the industry, so quite a big market if the experiment is successful.
Some SAF action in the helicopter world as well, also from Airbus:
A German H145 rescue helicopter flew for the first time with a blend of sustainable aviation fuel. Airbus says its helicopters can run on 50% SAF
Shortly after this test Airbus Helicopters called on other players of the helicopter ecosystem to join a Sustainable Aviation Fuel User Group to promote the use of SAF
What would the emergence of a sustainable aviation fuel industry at a scale mean for India? The WEF has published quite a thorough report.
Not strictly aviation, but here’s an interesting Bloomberg piece about the hydrogen economy and how oil and gas majors are investing in it. Green hydrogen to be cheaper than blue hydrogen by 2030?
Other commercial aviation news:
United Airlines launched a venture fund, United Ventures, to invest in emerging air mobility and air transport technologies. Pretty much all major airlines and airports are now VCs!
Check out the latest updates to the list of new airlines of 2021