Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- GE testing of giant GE9X engine aims for maturity at entry into service June 30, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 28. June 27, 2025
- Parent agency, FAA often at odds as politics outweighs safety June 26, 2025
- Electric Flight and the Ugly Duckling June 25, 2025
- Engine makers tout “Plan A” but have “Plan B” backups in R&D June 23, 2025
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 26.
By Bjorn Fehrm
June 13, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to improve the emission situation for Air Transport. We try to understand why development has been slow.
We have examined different ways to lower global warming over the course of the series. Over the last weeks, we have summarized what practical results we can expect from the different alternatives we have to reduce global warming from Air Transport. We looked at the following alternatives:
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 20.
By Bjorn Fehrm
May 2, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to improve the emission situation for Air Transport. We try to understand why development has been slow.
We have since we started in October last year looked at:
- Alternative, lower emission, propulsion technologies, ranging from electric aircraft with batteries as energy source, different propulsion hybrids and new concepts for Jet-fuel and hydrogen gas turbine engines.
- We have also reviewed recent research on the role of CO2, NOx emissions, and Contrails generated by airliners.
- Last week, we summarized the present situation around SAF, Sustainable Aviation Fuel.
Before we proceed, we shall examine some facts about the scale of the emission/global warming influences from Air Transport.
Figure 1. A picture of global Air Transport flying different routes. Source: Flightradar24.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 11.
By Bjorn Fehrm
February 28, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
Last week, we discussed the fact that Airbus has moved its hydrogen-fueled ZEROe aircraft into the 2040s and that it will be fuel cell based. It’s a bit of an irony that Pratt &Whitney announced major news for the alternative hydrogen burn alternative four weeks before. Let’s dissect what Pratt & Whitney announced.
Figure 1. Hans von Ohain’s first jet engine started on hydrogen in 1937. Source: Wikipedia.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 10.
By Bjorn Fehrm
February 21, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
Last week, we reviewed the present fallout of lower emission projects that have not reached their goals and where investors, therefore, have decided not to invest further.
There is a well-known project failing every month at the present pace. Some recent ones: Universal Hydrogen’s ATR conversions, Volocopter and Lilium’s bankruptcies, Airbus freezing the CityAirbus eVTOL (Figure 1) and pushing out the ZEROe hydrogen airliner, hibernation of the Alice battery aircraft, etc. There will probably be more in the coming months.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 9.
By Bjorn Fehrm
February 14, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
We have covered the progress of battery-based aircraft and hybrids. Last Corner started looking at hydrogen-fueled alternatives. A day after the Corner, the Airbus workers union Force Ovrier published information from an Airbus internal meeting, in which the airframer delayed the introduction of a hydrogen aircraft by 2035 to about 10 years later. As a consequence, it reduces the R&D spending on the development of hydrogen propulsion technologies.
Figure 1. The Airbus ZEROe concepts. Source: Airbus.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 8
By Bjorn Fehrm
February 7, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
We have covered the progress of battery-based aircraft and hybrids, where the last Corner was about the most sensible hybrids, the mild hybrids. Now, we turn to hydrogen-fueled alternatives.
Figure 1. The operation of a PEM fuel cell. Source: NASA.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 7.
By Bjorn Fehrm
January 31, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
We have covered the progress of battery-based aircraft and hybrids, both serial and parallel hybrids. A couple of mild hybrids have a larger chance of success than the ones we described. We will look into these and then start looking at different hydrogen-fueled alternatives.
Figure 1. The LEAP-1A with auxiliary gearbox. Source: Safran Transmissions.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 6.
Bjorn Fehrm
January 24, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
We have covered why the progress of battery-based aircraft is slow and also described what to expect at the end of this decade and the beginning of next.
Now, we look at hybrids, an inherently more complex design. Upstarts are changing to hybrids after realizing that battery-only aircraft will not have useful range this side of 2030.
Figure 1. The Heart Aerospace ES-30 has passed the phases in the article. Source: Heart Aerospace.
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Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 4.
By Bjorn Fehrm
January 10, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
We listed the different projects in the second Corner of the series that have come as far as flying a functional model or prototype. In Part 3, we went through some of the causes of the slow growth. It was a mix of inexperienced startup managments, all wanting to be the new Elon Musk but lacking elementary knowledge in the aeronautical field, to what is the real hard part of an alternative propulsion concept.
Many startups developed new electric motors for eAirplane or eVTOL use, a relatively straightforward development when the real hard part is the batteries. We described how batteries differ significantly from fuel as an energy source in Part 3.
Now, we add a market aspect that is poorly understood by most players.
Figure 1. The Pipistrel Velis Electro trainer. Source: Pipistrel.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 3
By Bjorn Fehrm
November 1, 2024, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We will find that development has been very slow.
Last week, we listed the different projects that have come as far as flying a functional model or prototype, as we need this filter to reduce the hundreds of projects that have declared they want to develop such an aircraft type. We can see that we have only a certified two-seat trainer, and one project has a prototype that has started certification, the CX300 six-seater in Figure 1.
Why is the progress so slow?
Figure 1. The Alia CX300 six-seater started certification in 2023. Source: Beta Technologies.