War and aviation, hydrogen, what else...? (The Allplane Newsletter #78)
What happened in the world of aviation in the last few days?
Well, with war raging in Europe the line above, which usually heads this newsletter, sounds a bit meaningless, in fact during the last few days it has been really hard to focus on anything else and it will certainly have massive implications for the aviation industry as well.
I plan to stick to the usual topics here, aviation innovation and sustainability and the like, but may be posting also any relevant war-related stories that I come across.
New podcast episode
Crypto for airlines, with Tom Hsieh and Lenny Moon, president and CEO of FlyCoin respectively. FlyCoin is a new crypto-based loyalty programme that aims to transform the way we understand frequent flyer programmes. LISTEN.
Sustainable Aviation News
One of the major events so far this year in this field is the unveiling by Airbus of its plans to use an Airbus A380 (actually MSN001 , the very first airframe) as a testbed for hydrogen propulsion. Glenn Llewellyn VP, Zero Emission Aircraft at Airbus explains it all in this video:
Also in the hydrogen flight space, H2Fly is advancing with its development programme. The German startup has already completed 76 flights with its demonstrator. LINK.
Synthetic fuel firm Synhelion announced that Swiss will be its first customer (that is, the moment it manages to get industrial production going). Lufthansa Group and Zurich airport are both partners of this innovative synthetic fuels startup project that we had the chance to review here on the podcast.
And more synthetic aviation fuel news, Norsk e-Fuel will build a production plant in Mosjøen, in northern Norway, using technology from Climeworks and Sunfire. Thsi new facility will use Norway’s ample supply of renewable energy to convert CO2 and water into aviation fuel. LINK.
A few days ago we presented on the podcast, the story of Flyv, a startup German airline that plans to fly electric planes. It turns out they may have competition in this space, since another German startup called Evia Aero plans to do something similar.
An article about the challenges of creating simulators for eVTOLs. LINK.
Here are some aviation stories coming out of the war in Ukraine
(please, note that, with the situation constantly evolving, these may have changed by the time you read this!)
First there is the obvious carnage on the ground and the direct effects for Ukrainian airlines and airports, then the banning of Russian airlines from pretty much every Western country and the Russian response banning Western airlines. I won’t get into detail here because this has received ample coverage in the media.
Here are some nuggets of information that elaborate on some of this aspects of the conflict and its consequences for commercial aviation:
Implications for the Russian commercial aviation industry. LINK.
Implications for the global air cargo supply chain. LINK.
The largest aircraft in the world, the one and only An-225, may have been destroyed on the ground during the fighting.
Kudos to Wizz Air for making 100,000 seats available free of charge to Ukrainian refugees moving out of the war zone. LINK.
What else in aviation?
A new airline, Niceair, plans to link the north of Iceland to several European capitals, bypassing Keflavik, the island’s main international airport. LINK.
More airlines added to the list of new airlines of 2022.