Towards a $1 Trillion Airline Industry and more (The Allplane Newsletter #177)
Picture: Avolon
Electric aviation
Leasing giant Avolon is partnering with Air New Zealand to support fleet electrification. For a starter, the Dublin-based lessor is going to finance a BETA Alia CX300 through a sale and lease-back transaction. To learn more about the work Avolon does in clean aviation, I suggest the recent podcast episode we did with Marc Tembleque, head of Avolon-e.
Advanced Air Mobility
More details are becoming known about Lilium’s last minute survival. The acquiring consortium is, reportedly, injecting €200M of fresh capital in the company.
Unfortunately, the other major German eVTOL developer, Volocopter, is also facing major trouble and it filed for insolvency right before New Year’s Eve. Is it going to be able to find investors and make it to market?
It’s amazing that I keep discovering new eVTOL companies I had not heard about until now, like this one, Eenuee, based in France.
Atlantic Aviation has acquired Ferrovial Vertiports. In November, Ferrovial Airports’ CEO had already told me in an interview that the company was no longer interested in the eVTOL/Vertiport space.
Archer has completed its large scale manufacturing plant in Covington, Georgia.
Horizon Aircraft, from Canada, has secured $8.4M in funding.
Czech eVTOL developer Zuri, in turn, secured an additional €3M in funding, taking the total Series A round to €4.4M (vs the €1.5M it originally targeted). Which means that funding hasn’t dried up entirely for this categoy, but these figures still seem well short of what’s needed to fully develop a new aircraft.
Hydrogen Aviation
Britten Norman has secured an order for 15 aircraft from German new generation airline Evia Aero, which, while originally conventionally powered, will potentially be retrofitted later on with the hydrogen-fuel cell that the British manufacturer is developing together with parent company Cranfield Aerospace Solutions.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)
The EU SAF mandate requiring the use of 2% SAF has kicked in with the new year. But are EU airlines in a position to comply?
In the meantime, this December EASA published its SAF market report covering the whole of 2023.
Other interesting aviation stories
The global airline industry may hit $1T (yes, that’s a “T” for trillion) for the first time ever in 2025.
Israeli tech entrepreneurs got fed up with high prices and limited flight options (due to the ongoing war situation many airlines cancelled Tel Aviv flights), so they teamed up to rent an aircraft and launch a virtual long-haul airline, TechAir.
airBaltic finds itself in a row with the Latvian government, some ministers have even called for the CEO to resign. In the meantime, the Latvian airline has tested Starlink connectivity successfully inflight.