Scandinavian tales: Heart Aerospace big day, SAS comeback & more (The Allplane Newsletter #166)
Vertical Aerospace VX4 in tethered flight. This is the eVTOL that Avolon has bet on.
Let’s see what has happened in the world of sustainable aviation these last few days!
First of all:
there’s a new episode of The Allplane Podcast!
Marc Tembleque is SVP Portfolio Strategy at Avolon, one of the largest aircraft leasing companies in the world. As if this was not enough, Marc is also the Head of Avolon-e, the division of the company that looks after novel aircraft technologies and has placed the largest single eVTOL order to date in the market.
So, in this episode of the podcast, we talk about the broader aircraft leasing market, how is works and which trends are shaping it, but we focus, very particularly, on Avolon’s investments in the advanced air mobility space and the role Avolon is playing in Airbus’ ZEROe hydrogen-propulsion project.
Electric Aviation
Heart Aerospace’s founder and CEO, Anders Forslund, at the 2024 Hangar Day in Göteborg, Sweden
Heart Aerospace unveiled its X1 demonstrator. I was in Göteborg, Sweden, to see it first hand! Here is what I saw, with pictures of the demonstrator aircraft included.
NASA is working in the field of electric aviation. The US space agency is going to run a pilot project at Tweed New Haven airport, in Connecticut, to evaluate the energy needs of airports in a future in which electric aviation has become a reality.
Flyvbird, a new German operator that aspires to go all electric soon, had a demonstration flight. It was operated by Alpen Air on a Tecnam PC2012. The startup is preparing for its orientative launch date of May 2025, although it will need to test its concept with conventionally-powered aircraft until hybrid or fully-electric aircraft become available.
Btw, Tomislav Lang, co-founder of Flyvbird was on the podcast some time ago explaining the early stages of this startup airline and its long term mission.
Advanced Air Mobility
Vertical Aerospace completed Phase 1 of its tethered piloted flight testing program. Next comes untethered piloted flight, a rather important step! The British advanced air mobility firm has also presented its H1‘24 results and confirmed it is looking to raise additional rounds of funding.
Fiji Airways appears to be interested in the remotely controlled VTOL cargo aircraft that Odys Avation is developing.
Joby has applied for the air taxi operator certificate in the UAE. The eVTOL developer has a similar certification in the US, where it has been conducting air taxi operations with conventional aircraft to best understand this business and operational model.
EHang received its Experimental Flight Authorization Certificate in Brazil.
Hydrogen Aviation
The mighty Hercules going hydrogen? Maybe, if this Cranfield University program goes ahead.
ZeroAvia has closed a $150 million Series C round.
H3 Dynamics is working with British firm QDOT to extend the range of the autonomous cargo drones the latter is developing.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)
There have been a new raft of rather substantial SAF investment announcements:
Infinium got $1.1B from Brookfield Asset Management
Twelve has raised $645M
AIR Company got $69 million
Formula 1 makes first SAF investment. The car racing organization will cover 20% of its jet fuel needs with SAF and will do so through DHL, its logistics partner, which will use the “book and claim” system. If you wish to learn more about how F1 travels around the world, check out this piece I wrote for The Points Guy some time ago.
Air Asia announced, during the Bali airshow, that is going to work with Airbus to develop SAF in Southeast Asia.
Iberia, Vueling and Spanish energy company CEPSA got together in Madrid to present a road map to increase SAF adoption in Spain. The Spanish airline industry will need at least 30 new SAF plants by 2050.
Carmen Murer, of Synhelion (an early guest of the podcast!) shows us around this startup’s pioneering eFuels plant in Germany. Quite useful to understand, visually, how the process this promising pathway to make SAF works.
Other sustainable aviation stories
Not sure whether this qualifies as sustainable aviation, but Spanish firm HALO Space is preparing to send people to the edge of space in a balloon from the desert of Saudi Arabia.
Other interesting aviation stories
SAS had an event in Copenhagen in which it presented its plan to resume growth after its recent switch to SkyTeam.
The CEO of SAS, Anko van der Werff, a few minutes before the start of the event marking the airline’s entry into SkyTeam
Quite a few news in the passenger experience department:
United Airlines is going Starlink. This is big in the field of IFE, since it is also planning to offer it for free!
Two airlines are preparing thorough cabin renovation programs:
Air India is kicking off its $400M cabin retrofit.
Brussels Airlines will invest $100M to revamp its cabins and get more A330s
JetBlue is going to open its first two lounges ever, at JFK and Boston
Emirates opened a brand new lounge at Stansted airport.
Russian airline S7, once a really forward looking airline when it comes to technology, it is now going to buy 100 Tu-214 aircraft, a model that was designed during the Soviet era.