New podcast episode

Helmut Mayer, founder of Aviation H2, an Australian startup, shares some insights about the possibilities of the ammonia-powered aircraft they are trying to develop. LISTEN.

Electric Aviation

It looks like, following their merger, Airflow and Electra are going to combine ideas in a future aircraft. Interesting interview with JP Stewart, general manager at Electra. LINK.

First Pipistrel Velis electric aircraft in Spain is already operative at Sabadell airport, near Barcelona. LINK.

First Pipistrel Velis in Spain, based in Sabadell, ear Barcelona

Avinor, Norway’s airport operator, has already been operating Pipistrel aircraft for quite some time. Its Head of Sustainability Olav Mosvold Larsen shows it in this video.

How to electrify a traditional aircraft? this video explains it, featuring magniX and Harbour Air (h/t to Adam Twidell!)

Advanced Air Mobility

Amazon has made a new investment in Beta Technologies, one of the firms that seems to be pulling ahead in the very competitive AAM space. LINK.

Advanced Air Mobility also taking off in Africa: EVE and Fahari Aviation, of Kenya, signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) for 40 eVTOLs. LINK.

How are eVTOL seats going to be like? Lilium has selected French seat maker Expliseat as it supplier. LINK.

Hydrogen Aviation

A very skeptical view of hydrogen’s prospects in aviation. It is always worth to what Michael Liebreich has to say about sustainability and energy sources!

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)

This has been quite a big week for SAF all around the world, from Scandinavia to the US, let’s see what’s new:

ATR, Neste and Swedish airline BRA completed successfully the first regional airliner flight running 100% SAF on both engines. The plane flew between Malmo and Bromma airport, near Stockholm. LINK.

An Airbus H225 completed the first helicopter flight powered 100% by SAF. LINK.

New SAF production project, this one to make Power-to-liquids (PtL) SAF in Hamburg, Germany. The project is led by a consortium of Uniper, Airbus, Siemens Energy and Sasol EcoFT and Emirates may be the first customer as soon as production comes on stream (from 2026 onwards). LINK.

And more Power-to-Liquids: Neste will build a technology demonstration center near Espoo, in its home country of Finland. Neste is a market leader in SAF, but so far most of the production comes from the HEFA process. LINK.

Also in the US! it seems industry is starting to invest seriously into next generation Power-to-Liquids SAF. This time is United Airlines Ventures investing into Dimensional Energy and, as it is very well explained in this piece, adding to the already broad SAF portfolio is already involved in.

Finnair is going to buy SAF from US-based Gevo. The Finnish airline had already pruchase agreements with Aemetis and Neste. LINK.

Airbus and Qantas will invest US$200M to launch SAF production in Australia. Apparently there are plenty of feedstocks that it is currently not possible to use locally. LINK.

AvFuel Corporation, an executive jet fuel supplier, is investing in Alder Fuels, a SAF producer. LINK.

Neste delivered SAF to NY’s LaGuardia airport using the Colonial Pipeline system. LINK.

All this SAF will have to eventually be purchased by someone and corporates with strong ESG goals are for now the prime customers. Shell, Accenture and AMEX Global Business Travel with the support of the Energy Web Foundation (EWF) have unveiled the Avelia platform, a book-and-claim system, which uses blockchain technology to verify and attribute purchases of SAF (since SAF is fungible, attribution or recognition of these efforts can be complicated). You can read more about this here. The idea is to get more corporates to join in.

Other interesting stuff in sustainable aviation

I published a piece on The Points Guy about the different sustainability programmes airlines currently have and how they are using their aircraft as a sort of flying billboard to publicize their environmental commitment. LINK.

H2 Clipper, another new generation airship project, this one in California and running on hydrogen. LINK.

What else in aviation?

OAG presented a panoramic view of the state of the global airline industry. LINK.

How to ferry an ATR turboprop from France to Polynesia? Here’s the route. A while ago, another ATR followed the same path and the ferry crew made a video that we duly shared here.

Big week in the Sustainable Aviation Fuel world & more (The Allplane Newsletter #91)