Lilium's predicament, CSA last flight & Natilus new plane (The Allplane Newsletter #170)
So, here are some of the most relevant stories in sustainable aviation these last few days, plus some other remarkable things that have happened in this industry!
Electric aviation
AURA AERO has been selected to get EU funding through the Innovation Fund, a program that will fund 85 projects throughout Europe at the tune of €95M.
Advanced Air Mobility
Looks like end of the road for Lilium, on the brink after the German eVTOL developer run out of cash and two of its subsidiaries entered bankruptcy proceedings. Can a last minute miracle save the project? Increasingly unlikely.
The liquidity position is one of the items we discussed with Lilium’s Co-founder, Daniel Wiegand, in the podcast we recorded just a few weeks ago.
At the time, the founder appeared confident that Lilium would have enough runway to get to certification and start cashing in from the multiple pre-orders it has signed, but the refusal, by the German government, to back a credit facility has triggered what would well be the first (but likely not the last!) bankruptcy of a major eVTOL developer.
This was, by the way, the same message I got from the firm’s CCO when I visited Lilium’s HQ near Munich in April.
In the meantime, we have learned about a new eVTOL project in China, with the backing of automotive company Chery and several other partners in the industry and academia.
And Wisk has shared a time-lapse video of its Gen6 aircraft fuselage being put together.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)
Nordic SAF producer St1 has started production at a plant in Göteborg, Sweden, using Honeywell’s Ecofining tech for the processing of waste oils.
Other sustainable aviation stories
LTA Research, the airship startup funded by Google founder Sergey Brin, has performed its first outdoor untethered flight.
Eli Dourado has published an interesting, bullish, article about airships
The always interesting to read Bjorn Fehrm has started a series of articles about the future of aviation in 2050, with the focus on the prospects for decarbonizaton and whether those goals are realistic or not. Bookmark.
Natilus presented a new blended-wing-body aircraft concept, called Horizon, with which it plans to enter the narrow-body, mid-sized passenger aircraft market. Quite a tall order! (Btw, if interested in this ambitious Californian startup, check out also our podcast episode with Natilus founder, Alexey Matyushev!)
Other interesting aviation stories
Czech airline CSA completed its very last flight after 101 years in existence (in fact, the airline had already almost disappeared after its acquisition by the , also Czech, Smartwings group and was just operating with a very limited structure). I happened to witnessed, unaware at the time, the departure of this farewell flight.
I managed to capture the moment in this picture:
Two new flight reviews following a recent trip to Kazakhstan, both on an A321LR: