Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 6P. Energy consumption, the deeper discussion.

Subscription required

By Bjorn Fehrm

February 11, 2022, ©. Leeham News: This is a complementary article to Part 6. Energy consumption. It uses the Aircraft Performance Model from our Consultancy practice to generate energy consumed data when we fly a typical airline mission for the first aircraft we analyze, the battery-based Eviation Alice and Heart Aerospace ES-19.

These represent what to expect for airliners that have chosen this energy storage principle.

Heart Aerospace ES-19. Source: Heart Aerospace.

Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 6. Energy consumption.

By Bjorn Fehrm

February 11, 2022, ©. Leeham News: In a sister article, Part 6P. Energy consumption, the deeper discussion we use Leeham’s Aircraft Performance Model from our consulting practice to generate the aeronautical energy consumption for aircraft like Eviation’s Alice and Heart Aerospace’s ES-19.

This is the energy needed to combat the drag of the airframe during flight (Figure 1). We then add the losses in the chosen propulsion system to arrive at the energy drawn from the energy source.

 

Figure 1. Simplified force model for an aircraft. Source; Leeham Co.

Read more

Forecast 2022: Sustainability

Subscription Required

By Bjorn Fehrm

Introduction

February 7, 2022, © Leeham News: The year that passed was when Sustainability broke through the walls of “I’m not convinced we have a problem” and “If so, what shall we do about it.”

The declarations ahead of, at, and after COP26 in Glasgow, United Nations 26’th climate conference, had many major states and organizations commit to targets for the reduction of Greenhouse gases by 2030 and 2050.

With this change in mind and traction, what can we expect to see in 2022 from the Air Transport industry?

Idea for Sustainable Air Transport, a hydrogen regional. Source: Sustainable Aero Lab.

Summary
  • The years that passed were run-up years. Now the preparations shall lead to the first results.
  • We summarize what we can expect to see during 2022.

Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 5. Fundamentals recap.

By Bjorn Fehrm

February 4, 2021, ©. Leeham News: We did a simple reality check on two high-profile ideas for Sustainable Air Transport last week, the Eviation Alice project and Heart Aerospace’s ES-19.

We now look at energy usage when performing Sustainable Air Transport flights, but it can be timely to recap some fundamentals of such flights before we discuss this.

 

Figure 1. A simplified aircraft force model. Source: Leeham Co.

Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 4. Reality checks.

By Bjorn Fehrm

January 28, 2022, ©. Leeham News: Having discussed where investments would be the most efficient in alleviating our Greenhouse gas problems and identified the low-hanging fruit, we now look at new technology airplanes that can improve the situation.

We start with classical airliners, working our way from small types to the largest, then we discuss the impact of new transport forms like VTOLs for short-haul transportation.

As we will use the Leeham Aircraft Performance Model in some of the work, there will be extra articles (for this one, a Part 4P) which are Paywall, where we use the model to generate deeper data and understanding.

Figure 1. The Alice nine-seater drawings from Eviation’s Web. The present drawing (dark blue) differs from the mid-2021 drawing (light blue, on top). Source: Eviation and Leeham Co.

Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 4P. Reality checks, the deeper discussion.

Subscription required

By Bjorn Fehrm

January 28, 2022, ©. Leeham News: This is a complementary article to the Part 4. Reality Checks article. It uses data from Leeham Company’s Aircraft Performance Model to develop the relationship between OEW (Operational Empty Weight) and MZFW (Maximum Zero Fuel Weight) compared with MTOW (Maximum Take-Off Weight) for 74 airliners in the model.

The article also discusses in more detail what’s the reasons behind large weight misses for new projects and how it’s handled.

Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 2. The problem to solve?

By Bjorn Fehrm

January 14, 2021, ©. Leeham News: Before we dig into the different alternatives we have for more Sustainable Air Transport, let’s look at the problem and its sources.

Figure 1 shows the emissions of CO2 per person since 1900 and the rise of the world temperature. The increase in world temperature changes the weather, with increased weather-related emergencies in recent years.

Figure 1. The increase in CO2 emission per capita and the rise of the world temperature from 1900 to 2018. Source: Wikipedia.

Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 1. A deeper look.

By Bjorn Fehrm

January 7, 2022, ©. Leeham News: We finished a 34 article series before Christmas about the enormous work involved to get a new aircraft certified for passenger transport.

It was a background article series to the one we start now, a deeper series on what’s involved in designing air transport vehicles that are less polluting for our environment. We have seen a landslide of such projects in the last years, and from an experienced aircraft designer’s desk, most of these are doomed for failure.

Figure 1. The Embraer Energia concept aircraft. A credible Sustainable Air Transport research program. Source: Embraer.

Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of airliner development. Part 34. Wrap-up.

By Bjorn Fehrm, Henry Tam, and Andrew Telesca.

December 17, 2021, ©. Leeham News: As we wrap up the series where we look at the monumental work you have to do to get a new aircraft type certified, we will discuss how we need several aircraft variants, addressing different markets, if we shall survive as an aircraft manufacturer.

All successful aircraft manufacturers produce and market a family of aircraft. If you stay with only one variant, you will find it hard to keep good people as the development work ends.

Figure 1. Beech 1900, a 19 seater aircraft developed from the Super King Air 200 with 9 seats. Source: Textron Aviation.

Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of airliner development. Part 33. Multi-country Certification

By Bjorn Fehrm, Henry Tam and Andrew Telesca.

December 10, 2021, ©. Leeham News: Our aircraft has now achieved its first deliveries and is Entering Into Service (EIS) with our launch customer. 

This covers one customer and one jurisdiction. As each country is sovereign in Airworthiness certification, we have work to do for each market we want to address.

Figure 1. A new 19 seater design, the Cessna 408 SkyCourier, started life as a cargo aircraft certified to US Part 23 standards. Here, the passenger version. Source: Cessna.

Read more