Where are the A380s recycled? This and much more on The Allplane Newsletter #184
Key story this week
Airbus held its annual Summit, in which it hinted that a new clean-sheet mid-sized airliner concept may see the light in the next decade. This is not a super-revolutionary design, but more of a (very) thorough evolution of the current generation.
What’s more, the ZEROe program is still alive, although it has been somehow scaled down a bit in its ambitions and now is more focused on the regional segment.
The European manufacturer shared a number of other sustainability initiatives, like a partnership with Solar Impulse, the organization led by Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard, who aims to circumnavigate the world in a hydrogen-powered aircraft, as well as projects in non-CO2 emissions research and SAF book and claim projects.
Advanced Air Mobility
Have you ever heard about Flynow?
The co-founder of this interesting Austrian eVTOL developer, Yvonne Winter, has been on the podcast to explain how they plan to take over the world with a lightweight, affordable concept that can be like the “Ford T” of the advanced air mobility era.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)
The bosses of many of Europe’s main airlines gathered in Brussels for the A4E Summit and issued a warning about the magnitude of the challenges that the ReFuel EU SAF mandates involve.
This criticism is backed by a recent report by the Boston Consulting Group that alerts that the industry is not doing enough to scale up SAF production.
Hydrogen Aviation
ZeroAvia continues to be a nearly endless source of news:
This week we’ve learned that it got a grant from the US Air Force within the framework of the AFWERX program, to work together with Reliable Robotics on autonomous and quiet air transportation solutions.
Because, yes, aside from being sustainable, electric motors (including those powered by hydrogen fuel cell) are quieter and that makes them interesting for military operations.
Also, former FAA Administrator Billy Nolen joined ZeroAvia to advise on regulatory matters.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Intelligent Energy has been selected by the CAA to participate in the Hydrogen Challenge, a program to advance in the certification of fuel cell hydrogen systems for aviation.
You can read all the details here.
French startup Beyond Aero shared some details about the latest iteration of the hydrogen-powered executive aircraft it is developing.
Other sustainable aviation stories
Sometimes is good to take a bit of a bird’s eye view of the whole industry ecosystem.
In this regard, this infographic by Alessa Berg, of Top Tier Impact, is pretty comprehensive, at least when it comes to the most advanced/feasible projects. Still some missing, I think, but it’s virtually impossible to fit them all in a graph like this…
How are old aircraft recycled?
I went to visit TARMAC Aerosave in the beautiful region of Tarbes, at the foot of the French Pyrenees, in order to find out.
What else in aviation?
A visit to Elixir Aircraft, one of the most interesting aerospace startups in Europe right now. Elixir is building light training aircraft using an innovative method that reduces the number of parts necessary to a minimum. Check out my behind the scenes story here.
There’s a new Brussels Airlines “Belgian Icons” livery. This one is dedicated to the Atomium, the famous Brussels landmark.
It’s interesting to see so many startups working on seaplane projects of different sorts, just in the last few days I’ve come across two competing amphibious firefighting aircraft projects, Belgium-based Seagle and France-based Airbus-supported Hynaero, as well as the small, recreational seaplane being developed by the Vickers Aircraft Company in New Zealand.
This is quite an interesting piece of tech I came across: Swiss company Meteomatics is dropping 250g foam gliders from the stratosphere (where they get to pulled by a balloon) in order to collect weather data.
There’s also a new update of the 2025 new airline list!