This was an extra long edition of the newsletter, but it’s been almost a month since the last issue (a mix of personal and professional reasons prevented me from sticking to the regular schedule!) and in the aviation industry, particular in what relates to sustainability, this is almost like an eternity!

But, finally…!

Here it is, packing the many relevant news that have taken place since the last edition was out!

Dubai Air Show 2023

In fact, one of the things that kept me busy was preparing to attend the Dubai Air Show, which, in the end, did not disappoint!

You can find the the Dubai Air Show coverage here on AeroTime.

Electric Aviation

What would get you faster from Central Germany to the North Sea (400km as the crow flies), an electric car or an electric plane? Read my CNN story about the latest E-Flight Challenge to find out!

Electric flight is touted as the future, but the first manned, fully-electric flight took place 50 years ago!

Nice profile of the Norwegian seaplane startup Elfly

More amphibious flying news: NEOM has been revealed as one of the investor’s in REGENT Craft Series A.

First fully electric turnaround at Budapest airport, home of Wizz Air (for a full view of Wizz Air’s sustainability efforts, check out this interview with Yvonne Moynihan, Corporate and ESG Officer at Wizz Air Group).

A rather optimistic view on the prospects of electric flight in the US air commuter market. A somehow niche market, but one that could develop significantly with the advent of electric aircraft.

The USAF is going to evaluate the Pipistrel Velis Electro as a training aircraft.

Advanced Air Mobility

eVTOLs continue to attract attention from outside the aviation world. In Norway, Wideroe Zero, which has an investment program in this space, is joining forces with Nordic hotel chain Strawberry and maritime technology group Seabrokers, to assess new uses in Norway for eVTOLs, in particular in connection to the hospitality industry.

Seeing eVTOLs flying around big cities is no longer a fantasy:

Wisk tested its prototype in LA:

…and Joby and Volocopter did so a few days later in New York City

Archer had also its first flight of the Midnight, although it finally didn’t fly at the Dubai Air Show and had at some point been expected.

What Archer did, as well, is announced to major deals in the UAE and India, respectively (the latter with one of the largest investors in LCC giant Indigo).

We saw also some of the largest US advanced air mobility players push for common charger standards. Good!

Beta Aerospace showcased its Charge Cube in NYC, a project that is also supported by Archer, and Joby is also pushing for a unified charger standard.

Beta was also in the news because it secured an order from Canadian helicopter operator Helijet. Likely not the first order from outside the US we are going to see soon, since the Vermont-based eVTOL developer has received $169M in financing from the Export-Import Bank of the U.S.

Startup LYTE and Twente airport in The Netherlands are partnering.

However, it is not clear what this collaboration involves other than this small Dutch airport offering a place to test and aircraft that doesn’t exist yet. The goal of linking European cities as far away from Twente as Paris or Munich with an eVTOL, tilt-rotor, all-electric 40-seater aircraft within a reasonable time frame sounds extremely ambitious, to say the least.

Chinese eVTOL developer XPeng has posted a video on TikTok showing a fancy sports car transforming itself into an eVTOL. Not sure if there is some real concept behind it or this is just for the Tik Tok crowd.

Lilium is back under the $1 mark on Nasdaq. The previous time this happened it raised the alarm and the stock got propped up by a fresh capital injection. At the time of writing this, the share price is at 0.87. Ouch!

EHang has opened a testing base at Lleida-Alguaire airport, in Catalonia, some 170km west of Barcelona.

Hydrogen Aviation

It turns out that the latest batch of Y Combinator startups includes an Australian team, called Stralis, designing a hydrogen-powered clean-sheet 50-seater airliner. They aim to be certified by 2030, which is…ambitious…even for Silicon Valley standards!

Universal Hydrogen is going to extend its hydrogen capsules supply system to ground support equipment (GSE) at airports. To be more exact, the hydrogen capsules are going to power fuel cells that will power the GSE.

At first glance, this sounds like a step too many, since the GSE could theoretically be charged directly from the grid, but this is, apparently, not always a possibility for technical reasons (a combination of grid limitations and lack of renewable power availability), so Universal Hydrogen’s system provides a sort of off the shelf plug and play system.

How does a fuel cell work? ZeroAvia explains in this video.

Japan Airlines has announced two collaborations in the field of hydrogen, one with ZeroAvia, the other with H2Fly, a Germany-based hydrogen flight developer fully owned by Joby.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)

First Emirates flights using SAF taking off from Dubai (DXB).

Sobering assessment of the role of SAF in the current American jet fuel market. And here is the the always relevant reflection by SAF expert Patrick Edmond about what this means.

Rolls-Royce announced the successful testing of its new UltraFan technology demonstrator operating at maximum power, as well as the completion of its 100% SAF test programme.

Singapore Airlines and Scoot aim to use 5% SAF by 2030 (for reference this is just a percent point below the EU 6% mandate on the same time-frame).

Boeing will test fuels produced by synthetic SAF firm Zero Petroleum referred to simply as “Zero”) at the University of Sheffield’s Energy Innovation Centre (EIC)

Macquarie Asset Management, an Australian investment group, is investing €175 million in SkyNRG, a Dutch SAF producer, in order to accelerate its growth.

The UK government is distributing £53 million in grants to 9 SAF projects across the UK, which add to another 5 projects that were already announced, making a total of £135 million to this emerging sector. Here is the list of the winning projects.

Air France-KLM invested in American SAF producer DG Fuels.

Other sustainable aviation news

Very persuasive case by Richard Aboulafia about the need for Boeing to come up with a clean sheet design sooner rather than later.

Spanish regional airline Air Nostrum is investing in Dovetail, which is led by a Spanish entrepreneur, David Doral (who was a guest of the podcast!).

Several airship projects have made announcements:

Ohio-based LTA Research, backed by Sergey Brin, is preparing its first flight.
In France, Euro Airship is also preparing a long endurance airship that should take aviation adventurer Bertrand Piccard and his team around the world.
And another French airship developer, Flying Whales, is partnering with Louis Dreyfus Armateurs, a shipping company, to explore multi-modal options for airship technology in the logistics chain.

As a matter of fact, Louis Dreyfus has been selected by Airbus to build new wind-powered ships that will carry aircraft sub-assemblies from Europe to its Alabama assembly line.

The Dutch government has reversed the Schiphol flight cap.

What else in aviation?

Quite a lot of orders at the Dubai Air Show 2023, with Boeing dominating in numbers. I refer you again to the AeroTime coverage for a comprehensive summary.

Everyone that has been involved in airline procurement projects knows they can take an awful lot of time. “Why airlines struggle to innovate?”, nice, succint piece by Iñaki Uriz, co-founder of Barcelona-based airline subscription tech provider Caravelo.

Talking about new technology adoption: which airlines have been more actively investing in the startup ecosystem? Here’s a post by industry expert and investor Frederico Fernandes.

Argentinian LCC flybondi will allow passengers to resell their tickets through other travelers. This development shouldn’t come as a surprise to those that listened, over a year ago, to our podcast episode with Facundo Díaz, co-founder of TravelX, in which he explained the NFT technology behind this concept.

McKinsey has looked into the value chain of the aviation industry with some (not so) surprising results.

Norse Atlantic flew a Dreamliner to Antractica, the first aircraft of this type ever to land in the frozen continent.

A profile of Tailwind, the seaplane operator that links Manhattan to Boston.

Vietnam’s Bamboo Airways seems to be in trouble.

Turkish Airlines was rumored to be about to announce an order, but it finally didn’t happen during the Dubai Air Show. The Turkish flag carrier keeps adding planes piecemeal, though!

Collins Aerospace is going to showcase a whole range of airport technologies at NEOM airport, which will serve Saudi Arabia’s futuristic new city.

Abu Dhabi airport has inaugurated its new Terminal A (the old one needed some upgrade as noted in my Etihad flight review last year)

And Singapore has reopened its Terminal 2. Still in the works is the grand project for a new Terminal 5.

Brussels Airlines got its first A320neo aircraft and so did Azores Airlines, while ITA Airways got its first A220-100 and its first A321neo.

AviLease has acquired Standard Chartered’s Aircraft Leasing Business.

BeOnd, the new premium airline, had its first flight, but before that, we could visit their specially configured A319 in Dubai.