The airship comeback, Celera 500L on hydrogen & more (The Allplane Newsletter #90)
New podcast episode
Glyn Hughes, director general at TIACA, the International Air Cargo Association, explains it all about BlueSky, the programme that helps operators across the air cargo supply chain get assessed and verified for ESG best practices. LISTEN.
Electric Aviation
Heart Aerospace is changing the certification basis of its future electric aircraft, form EASA’s Part 23 to Part 25. Apparently this may de-risk the process. Not an expert in this topic, so feel free to reach out if you have any comments about this matter!
Advanced Air Mobility
Great profile of Wisk, a AAM company that stands out in its industry because it has taken the way more risky (in terms of development) but potentially more efficient autonomous flying approach. LINK.
Joby has shared this video that explains their work with NASA measuring (and cancelling!) noise. Joby has made of its low noise profile one of its strong selling points. LINK.
Overair has raised $145M for its Butterfly eVTOL. The California-based startup has the Korean aerospace defence firm Hanwha among its major stakeholders. LINK.
A good summary of the current linkages between the automotive and advanced air mobility (AAM) industries. “Flying cars” may be made with the participation of…car companies! LINK. This is a topic, btw, that I also explored in this CNN piece back in 2019.
Hydrogen Aviation
ZeroAvia announced its ZA600 powertrain is going to propel one of the most interesting new aircraft designs out there, Otto Aviation’s Celera 500L. LINK. To learn more about this very unique teardrop-shaped aircraft, check out the piece I wrote earlier this year for The Points Guy.
Airbus and Kansai Airport (Japan) will jointly study the roll out of hydrogen infrastructure at airports. LINK.
Other interesting stuff in sustainable aviation
Boeing presented its latest ecoDemonstrator aircraft, a B777-200ER, which this summer and for a period of six months will be testing a whole package of efficiency-enahncing and environmentally-friendly technologies. This is but the latest in a series of aircraft that have served as ecoDemonstrators, in a programme that this year marks its 10th anniversary. Check out the announcement here.
Spanish regional airline Air Nostrum is ordering 10 AirLander10 airships from Hybrid Air Vehicles. The airships are expected to enter service in 2026. This is not the only disruptive project that Air Nostrum is involved in! Check out my piece here. In any case, it is really cool to see the comeback of the airship to commercial aviation!
Carbonclick offsets are now going to be available to the large number of travel agents that use the Amadeus booking platform. LINK.
What else in aviation?
Great summary by Ben Baldanza, former CEO of Spirit Airlines, about the general situation and perspectives in the Latin American airline industry. LINK.
The AirAsia Group plans a listing in New York, but it may actually be a dual listing, one for the airline and travel business and a separate one for its digital activities. LINK. Note that AirAsia is not totally out of the (financial) woods yet when it comes to recovering from the impact of the Covid pandemic.