Fully autonomous planes, electric seaplanes & more (The Allplane Podcast #131)
new on the podcast:
Marc Piette is the founder and CEO of Xwing, an amazing Californian startup that is pioneering gate to gate fully autonomous flight.
Check out what he has to say about the future of this potentially disruptive technology!
Safran is working to certify an electric engine that has been selected to power some of the first electric and hybrid electric aircraft slotted to hit the market, the likes of Aura Aero’s Integral E, VoltAero Casio 330 and Diamond’s electric DA40. READ.
Malmö Airport, which is part of Swedavia’s network of airports in Sweden, will be the testbank for the still-under-development Heart Aerospace ES-30 hybrid aircraft. READ.
Wingly, a digital marketplace to book flights on small aircraft, offers now several options to fly on electric aircraft. READ.
Advanced Air Mobility
Joby has submitted its Stage 3 certification plans to the FAA, detailing the tests, analyses, and design reports it intends to perform to demonstrate its compliance with each applicable safety regulation. READ.
Hydrogen Aviation
Decarbonization not only passes through the propulsion units, other systems are also ripe for improvement, like the auxiliary power unit (APU). TU Delft is working on a new concept, called APPU, to power it with hydrogen. READ.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)
Australia has kicked off its own Jet Zero Council and has allocated US$20M to support the local production of SAF. READ.
Other sustainable aviation news
Airports Council International (ACI) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) presented the “Airports of Tomorrow” initiative, which, together with a broad range of industry partners, aims to advance in the decarbonization of the airport ecosystem. READ.
Airbus opened a Wing Technology Development Center at its Filton facility, in the UK. READ.
Wizz Air’s vision of sustainability in an in-depth exclusive AeroTime interview with Yvonne Moynihan, Corporate and ESG Officer at Wizz Air Group. READ.
Widerøe is being acquired by Norwegian. What is going to happen to the Widerøe Zero aviation sustainability arm? For more context, here is the podcast episode with its head, Andreas Aks.
What else in aviation?
Two new flight reviews:
Air Serbia A320 business class
Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 business class
Two very long special nonstop flights: a Comlux-operated private Boeing 787 flew from Papeete to Barcelona and a RAF A400M from England to Guam.