Aviation News Recap (Allplane Newsletter #55)
What’s new in the world of green flight this week? What other curious and interesting aviation news have there been?
Let’s start with electric and hydrogen flight…
ZeroAvia’s announced news both on the operational and financial fronts. The startup has secured an additional $13M as well as two Dornier Do-228 aircraft to continue developing its hydrogen-electric technology.
To learn more about ZeroAvia, check out, in case you haven’t done it yet, the podcast we did with this firm’s CFO a few months back.
French startup VoltAero is starting its own hybrid-electric flying Tour de France, mirroring the cycling one. I wrote about this initiative a few months ago. Now is happening for real.
Eviation has unveiled the very sleek aircraft that it hopes to start test-flying later this year and launch commercially in 2024.
For more on Eviation check out the podcast I did with magniX CEO, who is also part of the Alice project.
Bye Aerospace has a launch customer for its future 8-seater all-electric aircraft, fractional jet ownership Jet It, which in Europe operates as JetClub. Read it here.
Airbus may have told EU officials that mid-to-large size hydrogen aircraft are unlikely to happen until 2050, way off the initial (admittedly ambitious) target of 2035. Here’s the Reuters piece.
IAG Cargo completed a series of 16 charter flights for German logistics firm Kuehne+Nagel using Sustainable Aviation Fuel. The flights were operated by British Airways Boeing 787-9 aircraft. 1.2M litres of sustainable aviation fuel were sourced from Neste for this endeavour.
Rolls-Royce and Shell signed an agreement to continue cooperating in the field of sustainable aviation fuel.
WHAT ELSE?
Virgin Galactic announced its first fully crewed flight for 11 July, with Sir Richard Branson onboard! Read the announcement here.
The first Embraer+Porsche Duet was delivered. This is exactly as it sounds, a “packaged” product that includes the plane and the car (and a watch to match!). Here’s a piece with more details about the “Duet”.
Major sports tournaments are always a good excuse for airlines to come up with new liveries and Euro2020 (was meant to happen last year!) is no exception. Danish domestic airline Alsie Express has done that with one of its beautiful black ATRs (btw, this small airline made headlines just a few months ago, because of its pioneering use of sustainable aviation fuel in Danish domestic flights)
A new airline has started operating in Brazil, ITA (not to be confused with the holding company of Alitalia, which adopted this same name as part of its restucturation process). ITA is short for “Itapemirim”, the major bus company behind this project. It starts small, with 4 A320s, but has ambitious plans.
New national airline in Saudi Arabia? Apparently aiming to compete with the likes of Emirates and Qatar Airways…(and, is there space for some many airlines in the region?). Here’s the info that has come up on Reuters so far.
A few more airlines stopped operating, they have been added to the 2021 airlines bankruptcy list!
