Aviation studies, again lots of SAF deals & more (The Allplane Newsletter #92)
New podcast episode
Keith Mason, head of the Centre for Air Transport Management at Cranfield University, in the UK. Cranfield is one of the world’s top education and research centres for all things aviation. In this episode of the podcast, Keith shares how is it like to study there and talks about some of the coolest aviation innovation projects that are currently taking place there. LISTEN.
Electric Aviation
Bye Aerospace eFlyer2, on track to get certified. LINK.
Costa Rica’s very aptly named Green Airways wants to be zero emissions airline. It helps that they operate only small planes. LINK.
If a few weeks ago we learned that Hawaiian Airlines wanted REGENT seagliders , it is now another Hawaiian carrier, Mokulele Airlines, the one to announced it is interested in these ground effect vehicles, although the smaller base version for 12 passengers (unilke Hawaiian, whose main interest was in a larger 100-pax version. LINK.
ARPA-E, the US govt’s research programme is looking into ways to double the performance of the best batteries under development today with the aim of eventually bein able to electrify the 100-seat aircraft category. LINK.
How is it like to fly electric? here’s this video of an electric flight over the Swiss Alps (the pilot was none other than Morell Westermann, who was also on the podcast after his record breaking flight over Germany a couple of years ago!)
Advanced Air Mobility
Astronics will make the power distribution systems for Lilium’s 7-seater eVTOL. These systems make sure that power flows from the batteries to the different parts of the plane that need electricity to work. They also regulate the charging of the batteries. So, pretty essential! LINK.
Hydrogen Aviation
Australian regional airline Skytrans, which is based in Queensland, in the north of the country, wants to modify Beech 1900D aircraft to run on hydrogen-electric propulsion. Another company called Stralis is also involved in this project. LINK.
(Coincidentally, a few days ago we had on the podcast the founder of Aviation H2, another Australian company developing hydrogen (ammonia to be more exact) propulsion solutions for commercial aviation. You can listen to it here.)
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)
Neste will almost double its sustainable fuel production capacity at the port of Rotterdam. The €1.9B investment will make it possible to add 1.3M tons per year of production capacity to the existing 1.4M. LINK.
(for more on Neste, listen to the podcast we did with its VP for Renewable Aviation)
Austrian oil company OMV will start production of SAF at its Petrobrazi plant in Romania. Feedstock is going to be rapeseed, of which Romania is apparently a large producer, but it is only the seeds that are usually exported. This will also be the first SAF production in Romania. LINK.
4Air has launched an online SAF carbon reduction calculator. Enter the parameters of your SAF intake and voilà! Check it out yourself here.
(btw, we also did a podcast with 4Air!)
Spanish energy company Cepsa is to cooperate with Vueling in developing SAF production and supply. LINK.
Cepsa has a similar agreement with Air Nostrum, as noted in my recent piece for The Points Guyl
Embraer and Pratt & Whitney completed a 100% SAF test (on one engine) on a E195-E2 aircraft. LINK.
Other interesting stuff
Two large companies released their sustainability reports:
New piece on The Points Guy about the plans Spanish airline Air Nostrum has announced to acquire 10 Airlander 10 airships from HAV. The low carbon fooprint of the airship is one of the key driving factors here. LINK.
There was the ILA air show in Berlin, an occasion to showcase the work of the European programme Clean Sky 2. LINK.
And the European Commission launched the Alliance for Zero Emissions, which aims to prepare the whole aviation value chain for the move to new propulsion technologies. LINK.
What else in aviation?
Etihad’s brand new A350-1000 is now flying to the US (to New York and Chicago). These aircraft are known as the “Sustainable 50” because the Abu Dhabi airline cooperates with Rolls-Royce and Airbus to test a number of sustainability-enhancing technologies on them. To learn more about the Etihad A350-1000 experience, check out this flight review from my flight on it last May.
Did you know that, in the summer, Turkish Airlines flies to dozens of international destinations nonstop from the Turkish regions, without passing through Istanbul? I have listed those routes for this piece on The Points Guy. LINK.