FutureFlight

The potential for new advanced air mobility (AAM) services to transform public transportation networks in Asia was the focus of last week’s Global Urban & Advanced Air Summit in Singapore. Top of the first day’s agenda was a presentation by Hui Ling Teo, a partner at the Singapore branch of Reed Smith law firm, underscoring the critical need for what she described as climate-resilient infrastructure in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

EHang has delivered five of its EH216-S autonomous aerial vehicles to a new customer, Shenzhen Boling Holding Group, which plans to use the two-seat aircraft for sightseeing tours in the vast city of Shenzhen in China's Guangdong province. 

This week, eVTOL aircraft developers Joby Aviation and Eve Air Mobility firmed up their plans to participate in South Korea's K-UAM Grand Challenge initiative to advance the introduction of air mobility services in its cities. Incheon, the site of the main airport for the capital, Seoul, is one of the cities expected to be an early adopter as its aviation director, Kwang-ho An, told the Global Urban & Advanced Air Summit in Singapore.

Vermont-based electric aircraft developer Beta Technologies flew its Alia prototype into Montréal on September 27. According to Beta, this was the first time an all-electric aircraft crossed an international border and the first time one landed in Montréal. The company is developing both vertical and conventional takeoff and landing versions of the aircraft.

London Oxford Airport is plotting a course to becoming a leading UK hub for green transportation, as environmentally friendly aircraft and technologies arrive over the next 20 years. The strategic move, announced at the privately owned airport’s Disruptors Day event earlier this month, marks a significant new path for a facility that has until now been best known as a hub for business aircraft and for pilot training.

Hydrogen Partners Britten-Norman and Cranfield Pause Planned Merger

Britten-Norman and Cranfield Aerospace Solutions (CAeS) have “paused” the merger they announced earlier this year. The UK companies say they will continue to work together to develop a hydrogen-powered version of Britten-Norman’s Islander family of nine-seat utility aircraft under what they now describe as a “strategic partnership agreement.”

Lilium has started assembling the electric propulsion system (EPS) it has developed for its six-seat eVTOL aircraft. The German company reported the milestone on September 26, a week after announcing that its partner Aciturri is building the first fuselage for one of seven Lilium Jet prototypes with which it intends to begin crewed test flights in late 2024.

Nearly three months after Universal Hydrogen relocated its Dash 8 testbed aircraft from Washington state to Southern California, the hydrogen fuel cell-powered airplane has kicked off a two-year flight test campaign. The converted turboprop, nicknamed “Lightning McClean,” took off from the Mojave Air & Space Port for the first time on September 26 and completed a 20-minute sortie.

GKN Aerospace will lead efforts to develop the high-voltage, high-power electrical wiring interconnection system needed for a hybrid-electric propulsion system that is expected to start flight testing in 2024. The project is being led by Raytheon Technologies companies Pratt & Whitney and Collins Aerospace and is expected to lead to the development of a propulsion system delivering a 30 percent improvement in fuel efficiency and reduced carbon dioxide emissions compared with current regional airliners.

Rolls-Royce and partners have run a Pearl 700 business aircraft engine on 100 percent hydrogen fuel as part of longer-term work to develop a hydrogen combustion engine for narrowbody airliners by the mid-2030s. Working with the UK’s Loughborough University and German aerospace research agency DLR, the aero engines group said tests on a full annular combustor proved that hydrogen can produce maximum takeoff thrust.