Behind-the-scenes at Joby & Icelandair & much more (The Allplane Newsletter #115)
Sustainable Aviation News
Electric Aviation
One of the topics that came up during our recent podcast episode with electric aviation evangelist Morell Westermann was the lack of a unified standard for chargers in the electric aviation industry. Here’s a post about Australian charger manufacturer Electro.Aero. Read more.
The electric aviation industry in The Netherlands has gathered together in an organization called Electric Flying Connection (EFC) in a way that is reminiscent to what the Nordics have done with the Nordic Network for Electric Aviation (NEA). Veel succes!
Advanced Air Mobility
Amazing, in-depth, behind-the-scenes video of Joby’s development, manufacturing and testing operations in California.
Btw, Joby has just completed the second stage of its certification process. Here, on page 10 of the Q2 ‘22 shareholders letter, is an explanation of what each of these certification stages involves.
Hydrogen Aviation
It is not only electric aviation that is seeing activity in The Netherlands, Rotterdam The Hague airport is positioning itself as a hydrogen hub and ZeroAvia is going to operate quite a few test flights from there. Shell is also a partner in this project. Read more.
H2Fly, the hydrogen aviation startup owned by Joby Aviation, is preparing a flight test campaign this summer for its liquid hydrogen fuel cell-propelled aircraft. Read more (paywall).
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)
LanzaTech, the biofuels company Lanzajet was spun off from, is now listed in the Nasdaq. Read more.
Neste’s new refinery in Singapore is almost ready. Watch it here.
ATR and Pratt & Whitney are preparing for engines running on 100% SAF. Read more.
Other sustainable aviation news
The UK is allocating another £113M ($136M) into sustainable aviation projects. In this site, HM Government is the breakdown of projects that will get funding. Check.
Hybrid Air Vehicles is partnering with JETMS Completions to develop cabin interiors for luxury and tourism applications for its up and coming Airlander airships. Read more.
We had HAV’s CEO, Tom Grundy, not long ago here on the podcast too!
What else in aviation?
My review of Icelandair’s Saga Premium class on both the B737-9 MAX and the Boeing 757 (which happened to be the beautiful “Vatnajökull”!). A delightful experience on my way to Iceland and back!
And also my behind-the-scenes report from Icelandair’s safety training center. Read it here.
A very intriguing story: an aircraft with a mixed livery combining Nordwind Airlines (Russia) and Ukraine International Airlines, which flew between Kaunas and Naples with a touch and go landing in Geneva (for tax reasons). See the twitter thread here.
There have been a number of updates to the lists of new airlines of 2023 and airlines that have already gone bankrupt this year.
It is precisely this airline bankruptcy list that has caught the eye of CNN, which quote me me commenting on this matter. Read the piece here.
Quite a few more articles on Aerotime:
Qantas may be considering the launch of Paris flights. Read more.
Virgin Atlantic is about to join SkyTeam. Read more.