Airbus Summit, Soviet hydrogen aircraft & more (The Allplane Newsletter #109)
Picture: BA
What’s new this week?
We’ve got a new Podcast Episode
Patrick Edmond is the managing director of aviation consultancy firm Altair Advisory. A highly experienced aviation professional whose career spans airline and airport management, airline technology, aircraft leasing and consultancy services, Patrick is also an avid industry commentator, with the capacity to offer always valuable insights on a broad range of topics.
In this episode of the podcast we zoom into the regional aviation industry and analyze the different challenges it faces, not least of them, the need to become more sustainable and to ensure its competitiveness in markets that are increasingly dominated by LCCs. LISTEN.
Sustainable Aviation News
Airbus Summit: a whole range of sustainable flight initiatives were unveiled at this event the European aircraft manufacturer organizes annually.
Let’s see some of the main novelties:
Hydrogen-powered fuel cell for Airbus’ ZEROe programme. LINK.
There is also going to be a liquid hydrogen refuelling facility for the ZEROe at Toulouse-Blagnac airport, where Airbus has its main production facility. LINK.
In case you were wondering, Airbus is not only investing in hydrogen. It also announced a partnership with French car manufacturer Renault to work on electrification research, particularly in what concerns batteries. LINK.
Recent developments are bringing the aerospace and car industries closer than ever, as I explained in this CNN article a few years ago.
Airbus signed an agreement with Neste to further develop SAF production and use . What does this mean in practice? It seems that it will involve research and testing of SAF production technologies and the subsequent approval processes. LINK.
Airbus also to partner with CERN, the European multinational research center famous for its work in particle physics. The subject of study will be superconductivity, obviously relevant in a context of electric aircraft development. LINK.
There is also going to be a new flying laboratory to improve the efficiency and sustainability of helicopter flight, the aptly named DisruptiveLab, which Airbus will start using before the end of this year. The lab will be based on a H130 helicopter. LINK.
Electric Aviation
Nice visualization of the different low carbon new aircraft projects, bringing together in an elegant way the different relevant dimensions of (expected) entry into service date, range and size, by GH Aviation, a consulting firm set up by a former Airbus executive. LINK.
Ampaire’s Eco-Caravan, the hybrid-electric conversion of the famous Cessna model, made its first flight. LINK.
Decarbonization is also happening in the rotorcraft segment, here’s a pioneering flight conducted in California by a small Robin eR-44 helicopter. LINK.
Advanced Air Mobility
Québec-based VPorts is setting up the first internatinal advanced air mobility corridor, linking Montréal and Syracuse, NY. LINK.
Yet another critical assessment of the business case for eVTOLs, this one by Kevin Michaels on Aviation Week (h/t to Patrick Edmond for bringing this to my attention!).
“A Robinson R44 (helicopter) costs less than $500,000. If there is such pent-up demand for this service, why isn’t the world covered with R44 air taxis?”
This was one of the topics we discussed with Michael Barnard in this recent episode of the podcast.
Hydrogen Aviation
Grazia Vittadini announced that Rolls-Royce has developed a new jet engine that runs on hydrogen. LINK.
How does a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain look like? Universal Hydrogen shows it to you. LINK.
Fascinating footage of the experiments the Soviet Union conducted with hydrogen propulsion in the 1980s, the aircraft in question was a specially modified Tupolev Tu-154, renamed as Tu-155.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)
For the first time, an aircraft has flown on 100% SAF in the UK, a Royal Air Force Airbus A330 MRTT. LINK.
Nova Panagea has confirmed the location of its new biofuels plant in Teeside, in Northern England. The plant will produce SAF, among other things, from ethanol. Nova Panagea is one of the strategic partners we talk about in our recent podcast episode with Jimmy Samartzis, the CEO of LanzaJet. LINK.
Other interesting stories in sustainable aviation
Five companies (GKN Aerospace, MTU Aero Engines, Airbus, Collins Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney), three universities in Greece, Germany and Sweden and the German aerospace research centre (DLR) have joined forces in the Sustainable Water-Injecting Turbofan Comprising Hybrid-Electrics (SWITCH) project. The idea is to combine hybrid-electric and Water Enhanced Turbofan (WET) technologies to reduce teh aircraft’s carbon emissions by 25%. LINK.
WET technology “recovers water vapor from the engine exhaust and re-injects it into the combustion chamber to significantly improve fuel efficiency, reduce NOx emissions, and lessen contrail forming emissions”.
British Airways is now offering its passengers the possibility of purchasing carbon removal credits, which, as the name implies help pay for projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere. So, BA passengers have now three options to mitigate their carbon footprint: offsets, topping up with sustainable aviation fuel and pay for carbon removal credits. LINK.
What else in aviation?
Interesting post on Will Horton’s Linkedin about the features that define (or don’t) a successful long haul low cost airline. Plenty of interesting comments too. LINK.
Singapore Airlines and Tata Sons are going to merge Air India and Vistara. SIA will keep a 25% stake in the resulting entity. Long awaited consolidation, although not clear what happens to the different brands. Do they remain separate? LINK.
A Russian MC-21 airliner was spotted in the livery of the Aeroflot-affiliated Rossiya airline. With Russia cut-off Western aviation technology, the MC-21 is likely to become the workhorse of domestic airlines BUT…even if it is domestically built, the first MC-21 units are equipped with Pratt & Whitney engines and it seems that the Russian-made alternative, called PD-14, is nowhere near being ready for mass-production yet. LINK.
Croatia Airlines becomes the latest airline to order the Airbus A220. The Croatian airline has been on the brink for quite some time, but it seems that it is now looking at its long term future with renewed optimism. It will order 6 A220s and plans to lease another 9. LINK.