June 15, 2020 - No. 043 In This Issue DynCorp Gets Army Aviation Field Maintenance Support Contract. AVIATION STRIKES BACK Duncan Aviation, Gogo Add AVANCE Installation Options for Business Aircraft NATA Launches New Covid Standard for FBOs AP govt drops aerotropolis in Vizag, airport alone to be built FRC East expands repair and testing capabilites on F-35 component NATA Releases Fire Marshal Toolkit and Accidental Foam Discharge Checklist. Government publishes aviation COVID-19 guidance Etihad Airways overhauls cabins on nearly 100 of its passenger aircraft ZeroAvia's Val Miftakhov makes a compelling case for hydrogen aviation SpaceX launches 58 more Starlink satellites and 3 Planet Skysats for first rideshare launch DynCorp Gets Army Aviation Field Maintenance Support Contract DynCorp International received a $46.9M contract modification to provide program management support to the U.S. Army's aviation field maintenance directorate in the world's east region. The company said Thursday it will also help maintain aircraft and ground support equipment, modify aerial systems and perform logistics work for aviation customers operating in Afghanistan and Iraq. Army Contracting Command issued the AFM II East contract modification March 10. Work is expected to be complete by July15. DynCorp is also the contractor for the potential $1.1B AFM II West program the service branch awarded in April 2019. https://blog.executivebiz.com/2020/06/dyncorp-gets-army-aviation-field-maintenance-support-contract/ Back to Top AVIATION STRIKES BACK The last month has been, suffice it to say, the dark side of aviation. A combination of maintenance misery, coronavirus, European rules, and an airplane turned money pit has tainted the glories and freedoms of aviation with the dark, menacing cloud of a massive thunderstorm. In many instances of ranting to friends, one suggested that I write about my experience, ostensibly to point out how various byzantine Kafkaesque rules could use an overhaul. My only reply was: "It is going to sound like I am whining about the consequences of my own ignorant, ill-fated decision to voluntarily ship an old airplane to Europe and not expect to be driven insane by the rules that were well known to exist beforehand." Well, here I am, writing about it anyway. Putting the Economist Hat On - Mechanics The situation I have been facing this month devolved into a cesspit of money spending, eventually landing on a situation requiring specialized assistance, which meant finding a specific mechanic willing and able to do the job. It is always an issue to find one that will work on an N-registered aircraft, either if the person is a FAA A&P, or uncomfortable with performing the work, furnishing a work order, and having a separate FAA A&P return it to service. After getting over those hurdles, which often means far fewer mechanics are available, I find that they are all booked solid, despite the fact that the world is flying less. This seems to be the case most of the time, and I had to ask why that is the case. In a previous post, I wrote about how EASA had changed some rules to loosen up mechanical licensure, stepping closer to the "freelance mechanic," which otherwise barely exists here. The problem lies in the quantity of policies, procedures, and paperwork that revolve around flight instruction and maintenance activities. It favors organizations over individual mechanics and instructors, which favors highly active flying clubs instead of private ownership. That means a small fleet of [rented] aircraft, flying quite regularly, with resources onsite in the case of a problem. If a plane is out of service, there are others to rent. Along comes the American with a Cub, asking for some help from an organization like this, even if the European mechanic is a FAA A&P, and the answer is almost uniformly that these institutions are booked out for weeks. How could this be, that in the land where rules stifle aviation, there are thriving, profitable businesses? When one combines paperwork and rules eliminating freelancers, pushing activity to busy clubs and repair stations, one can find that they are incentivized to run at full capacity, pushing new bookings out into the future. That is not a problem with clubs and companies with small fleets, as aircraft can be substituted. Some private owners have their airplanes "operated" by clubs, which means they are part of the system, likely getting priority. Add in that some European countries have labor laws that discourage eliminating staff, and one can see that economics + the rules and structures that be = limited organizations keeping their order books full. In the US, another A&P would be hired part-time to pick up the slack, whereas those decisions are made far more conservatively on this side of the pond. Besides, who cares if some immigrant wanders in with a broken plane? That does contrast with the reality that I have wondered how A&Ps in America earn a good living. Many freelancers are either vintage airplane enthusiasts, work weekends for extra money, are retired, or are poor businessmen. To run a proper repair station, cover fixed costs, bear the risk of liability, and earn more than a low-end wage, fees would need to be structured not too differently than in Europe, with order books as full as possible. I am not sure what the point of this subsection is, other than exasperation that offering to shower money on maintenance technicians seems to not produce.... maintenance activities. Coronavirus - Get Out of Jail Free Card It is apparent that the pandemic's effect on supply chains is separating the wheat from the chaff when it comes to competence. Unfortunately, I had two maintenance nightmares span this situation, and they both are revelatory. The first was an exhaust stack repair early in March. I phoned an outfit in the USA, who told me they would repair it two weeks after I sent it. Noting how I would be out of service a month, I asked if we could come to an agreement and prioritize it for a fee. After some back and forth, the price was set at $250 for the expedite fee. "We'll get to it in 3-5 days." "From now?" "No, after it arrives. Wait....6 days. We can do it in 6 days." "Six calendar days?" "No, 6 business days." "Then why I am I paying $250 for it to take the same amount of time." "We're not shutting down our shop for you! Good day!" [click] I called another in the USA, same deal: 2 weeks. I asked about AOG fees and these people kindly told me that "We used to do it. Everyone then pays it, and we can't keep up." I would say hire more people, but I digress. Maybe they figured out the European model of profitability... I got recommendations for an excellent outfit in Germany. I called them and they said the backlog was one week. I packaged loads of customs paperwork, including that the whole aircraft is customs cleared into Germany, and shipped overnight, ok with the week delay as shipping round trip would be overnight instead of a week. After 10 days, nothing had happened, as it was still at customs. DHL said the exhaust shop was ignoring them. The exhaust shop sent signed copies of paperwork submitted to customs. A week later, I was informed that German customs was returning it "for insufficient paperwork" and it would take... a month. I would have driven up there to clear it, except lockdown began and borders were closed. "We've had people do that before," said the shop. That's it! I am going top dollar brand new PMA! I called another shop in the USA, agreed on $1500 for new parts, gave specifications, and they were wonderful to get it done in a few days and hurry up to ship it as lockdown was looming for them. It arrived in Europe, after $250 in express fees....and it didn't fit. While exhaust systems can be subjective on Cubs, there is nothing subjective about the exhaust port on the cylinder and the location of the adjacent intake elbow. At this point, I found a blacksmith in town who heated and whacked the relevant portion into submission, and that problem was solved. While it was a frustrating charade that ropes in the pandemic, it is a microcosm of everything that is miserable about attempting to keep a 1940s airplane in the air. I am beginning to lose the romance of the idea, that's for sure. Coronavirus woes are not over. The latest round has resulted in ordering no less than six installments of parts from the UK and USA, and each order begins with "carriers are not guaranteeing delivery times." That actually means two things: the carrier is released from doing the job, and the parts seller now has no obligation to be dutiful in getting "overnight" orders out, communicating about it, or getting anything right. I could go on about the miseries endured, down to full on incompetence and outright fraud (charging for overnight, sending economy, refusing to credit the difference). Some carriers are delivering as promised, and some distributors get things out as promised. Some distributors indicate their fulfillment backlog clearly, others take the order and payment and ship it a week later with not a shred of understanding why that is a problem, pointing to the pandemic as a blanket excuse for blatantly failing to live up to promises. It has been, needless to say, challenging. It would be helpful if distributors would post clearer notice as to their current situation (as some do), though I would imagine there is an incentive to hide deleterious backlogs so as to ensnare customers into making a sale that they wouldn't otherwise make. It is interesting to watch how some keep the parts flowing as if nothing has changed, and others seem to have fallen apart. The End of General Aviation I woke up this morning with a headline in Swiss news. The Upper House of Parliament voted for a package to impose taxes on each passenger for commercial airline flights, for environmental reasons. I also noted that it includes "private flights where fees will be from $500 to $5000 per flight." Come again? That caused a panicked Google search, which revealed little as to what a "private flight" meant. Stewing over breakfast, I didn't even need to articulate the ramifications if this were true. My wife was the one to suggest living in another country if that was correct. I didn't think it would apply to light aviation, as it would immediately end all non-luxury general aviation in the entire country. None of these mechanics I am spending so much time talking about mentioned it, nor did it appear anywhere else, so I sent some emails, and response was that the proposed legislation apparently is limited to private flights in "jet aircraft." I don't know if that means jet a-1 powered flights (including diesel engines), includes turboprops, or is for turbofan engines only. While those in the US would cringe at these fees, I must point out that they are fractional compared to the total fees paid in Swiss aviation for larger aircraft. The type of individuals that come and go in Switzerland in private jets are of the highest wealth tier globally and will likely pay the fees, with some modest decrease in utilization. The issue, however, lies with how, if that law were written poorly or incorrectly, it could, in one fell swoop, end all general aviation in the name of environmental reasons. We talk frequently about "user fees" and other such things "creeping" into aviation in America, slowly squeezing it. We do not talk about an Armageddon where one law ends the entire thing overnight. While it is unlikely to happen, this morning's news headline was at the very least educational. It also cemented that the battle keeping an old plane flying is losing its romantic appeal, though I can't imagine choosing to have a life without aviation. I suppose, much like flying a Cub low and slow in a thunderstorm (hmmm...that has never happened), the clouds eventually clear and one flies again on a sunny evening over bucolic farmland. My prefrontal cortex can intellectualize the concept, though the emotional reality of my sentience is so immersed in this misery that I can't seem to get my head around the idea of flying before I am no longer middle aged. This too shall pass... https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/2020/06/14/aviation-strikes-back/ Back to Top Duncan Aviation, Gogo Add AVANCE Installation Options for Business Aircraft Duncan Aviation said earlier this month that it is partnering with Gogo to offer new installation options for the Gogo AVANCE L3 Wi-Fi system and the Gogo AVANCE Smart Cabin System (SCS). The new options, afforded through Duncan Aviation's amending of three Supplemental Type Certificates (STCs) for the Gogo AVANCE L5 Wi-Fi system, will allow business aviation operators to install the Gogo AVANCE L3 Wi-Fi system or a standalone SCS in more than a dozen aircraft models, including the Gulfstream GIV and GIV-X and the Bombardier Challenger 300, 250, 604, 605, and 650, according to Duncan Aviation. The Nebraska-based company, which bills itself as the largest family-owned maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility in the world, said that amended STCs for the Gogo AVANCE L3 Wi-Fi system will include the installation of the single air card Line Replacement Unit (LRU) and mounting tray and will cover all other existing architecture for the AVANCE L3, including the Wi-Fi and terrestrial modem antennas. The amended STCs will also cover design changes for the installation of the Gogo AVANCE SCS. David Salvador, vice president of aftermarket sales for Gogo Business Aviation, said in a statement that the added STCs Duncan Aviation is developing for Gogo AVANCE L3 and SCS, "will greatly benefit our mutual business aviation customers." Duncan Aviation said that the built-in cybersecurity of the AVANCE L3 allows business passengers to "connect safely and securely" to their companies' Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) "to meet deadlines, send and receive important email, and access information on the Web" and to access onboard news and entertainment with no connection needed using Gogo Vision, which is built into the L3 system. AVANCE L3 also provides pilots with real-time information on popular pilot applications, Duncan Aviation said. SCS allows passengers to make voice calls, view in-flight maps and destination weather reports, and access entertainment with Gogo Vision enabled. Shawn Carraher, Duncan Aviation's manager of engineering and certification business development, said in a statement that L3 and SCS are "cost-effective options for customers who want the reliability and functionality of Gogo's AVANCE system but don't yet need the speed of the L5 Wi-Fi system." https://www.aviationtoday.com/2020/06/12/duncan-aviation-and-gogo-add-avance-installation-options-for-business-aircraft/ Back to Top NATA Launches New Covid Standard for FBOs As part of a commitment to reduce the spread of the Covid-19 virus, NATA today launched its new Safety 1st Clean standard for FBOs. The voluntary program incorporates best practices from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the maintenance of a safe environment, including cleaning and disinfection methods for all surfaces and areas of the terminal. It includes a checklist for companies to follow for self-certification and the right to display the Safety 1st Clean logo. The document states that all organizations must adopt a hazard communication program, with workers receiving training to prevent the spread of disease. Such instruction will consist of implementing social distancing, using proper hygiene at work including the use of PPE, and staying home if aware of exposure to illness. Companies must also institute policies for evaluating the health of team members prior to and during work hours. Certain areas such as crew lounges, snooze rooms, company transport vehicles, and high-touch areas must be cleaned and disinfected after each use. "The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic around the world brought the entire aviation industry to a grinding halt in a way that many of us were unprepared for," said NATA senior v-p Ryan Waguespack. "As flight activities continue to increase, NATA felt it was critical to develop and provide Safety 1st Clean for free to the entire business aviation community to maintain safe and successful operations moving forward and to be better prepared for future outbreaks." https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2020-06-12/nata-launches-new-covid-standard-fbos Back to Top AP govt drops aerotropolis in Vizag, airport alone to be built Amaravati, June 14 (PTI) Only a new airport will now be built at Bhogapuram near port city Visakhapatnam as the Andhra Pradesh government dropped the proposal to develop an aerotropolis, official sources said. GMR Airports Limited, which signed the concession agreement with the state government two days ago, confirmed it would be building only an airport and not the other facilities as previously planned. In January 2018, the then Chandrababu Naidu government had said it wanted to build an aerotropolis that would include aviation-linked manufacturing units, aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility, research and development centre and test laboratories, multi-modal logistics, exhibition and conference centers, leisure and entertainment facilities, aviation education and training facilities. The grandiose plan also included development of the airport with one runway, parallel taxiway and other infrastructure capable of servicing worlds largest aircrafts. In the subsequent tenders floated by the AP Airports Development Corporation Limited (APADCL), GMR emerged as the winner and the successor government of YS Jagan Mohan Reddy also gave the go-ahead to GMR for the project development. It has kept the concession agreement with GMR confidential and no details of the project were made public. Sources in the APADCL, however, said the scope of the project has been completely altered and only the international airport would now be developed. The APADCL Board had felt that the proposed aero city and aviation academy may not be feasible at this point of time. This was communicated to the state government. Accordingly, the other components of the plan were dropped, a top official of APADCL told PTI. Consequently, the state government decided to retain 500 of the total 2,703 acres of land acquired for the aerotropolis, and hand over only 2,203 acres to GMR for development of the greenfield international airport. A release from GMR said the project involves designing, building, financing, constructing, developing, operating and maintaining the greenfield international airport for 40 years, which could be extended by an additional 20 years through international competitive bidding. An SPV GMR Visakhapatnam International Airport Limited (GVIAL) has been floated to take up the development. As per the latest development model, GMR offered to pay Rs 303 PPF (per passenger fee) to the state government. As per projections, the number of passengers is expected to be 3.1 million by 2021 and nine million by the year 2036. The existing airport in Visakhapatnam, owned by the Navy, handled 2.78 million passengers in 2019 besides 4,400 tonnes of cargo. PTI DBV VS VS https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/ap-govt-drops-aerotropolis-in-vizag-airport-alone-to-be-built/1865913 Back to Top FRC East expands repair and testing capabilites on F-35 components HAVELOCK, Craven County - A new public-private partnership with Lockheed Martin gives Fleet Readiness Center East another means of supporting naval aviation, repair and testing on 14 F-35 components. "This component workload is the next step in F-35 maintenance at Fleet Readiness Center East, and we're excited to have begun this work," said FRCE Commanding Officer Capt. Mark E. Nieto. "We're looking forward to providing increased support to our Navy and Marine Corps aviators, and we're hopeful these new capabilities will also bring a positive economic impact for the local community." As the lead site for depot-level maintenance on the F-35B Lightning II, Fleet Readiness Center East is no stranger to the fifth-generation fighter. FRCE has conducted modifications and repair on the Marine Corps' short takeoff-vertical landing variant of the aircraft since 2013 and has also worked with the F-35A (conventional takeoff and landing) and F-35C (carrier) variants. However, the new capabilities declarations are a first for F-35 at the depot, said Steve Gurley, F-35 capability establishment lead at FRCE. "This is a new workload coming in for Fleet Readiness Center East," said Gurley, who ensures all the logistical elements are in place before the depot declares capability on F-35 components. "We inducted our first F-35 valve in February, into our valves and regulators shop. That valve is the first of the 14 components that we've declared capability on." The F-35 components workload will expand as new capabilities are established. "We'll be working with anything from valves to ejection seats to a turbomachine, which provides power to start the engine. There will be a good variety of components, and there is a pretty quick ramp up," Gurley said. "We have the 14 we've declared capability on, and we have 42 F-35 components that we're in the process of declaring on, and there are more to come. Starting this year, in fiscal year 20, there are additional activations that will eventually put us at 105-plus components for the F-35." The new F-35 component work provides FRCE with a scheduled workload through 2024 and beyond, Gurley said. "The F-35 is the future of naval aviation, and this is a way to keep FRC East viable as a provider for that," he explained, adding the additional workload could also lead to hiring to support the program. "It's a huge effort, and it's going to reach out to a lot of different areas." The majority of the increase in capabilities from 14 F-35 components to 57 is scheduled to occur through November 2021, which means those declarations are rapidly approaching. https://wcti12.com/news/local/frc-east-expands-repair-and-testing-capabilites-on-f-35-components Back to Top NATA Releases Fire Marshal Toolkit and Accidental Foam Discharge Checklist Today, the National Air Transportation Association (NATA) released the Fire Marshal Toolkit and Accidental Foam Discharge Checklist as part of its Hangar Foam Fire Suppression System Initiative. An educational resource for Fire Marshals, FBO owners, and operators, the Toolkit provides vital information facilitating hangar design and construction conversations and highlighting research and frequency data on inadvertent hangar foam fire suppression system discharges. This free online resource provides information on FBO operations and includes detailed information on factors impacting the decision to use foam fire suppression in hangars, including: Aviation fuels Types of foam Aircraft hangar fire protection regulations Possible environmental issues from foam Causes of unwanted foam discharges Insurance considerations The Toolkit outlines NATA's proposed changes to NFPA 409 - Standard on Aircraft Hangars; and with inadvertent foam discharges occurring almost once per month on average, The So You've Had an Accidental Foam Discharge, Now What? checklist provides critical guidance on what should or should not be done following a hangar foam system discharge. "NATA members have noted that hangar foam systems provide very little risk mitigation due to the very low incidence of hangar fuel fires while dramatically increasing the cost of new hangar development - assertions that have been confirmed by a 2019 University of Maryland research study," stated NATA President & CEO Timothy Obitts. "As part of our initiative to reduce the requirements for foam systems in aircraft hangars, we wanted to assist the industry by developing a resource guide for interacting with local fire officials during new hangar construction." "Until changes to the NFPA 409 standard are made, this resource will serve as a guide to help educate local fire marshals and hangar developers on the safety and environmental risks, as well as the potential of aircraft damage related to accidental discharges of hangar foam suppression systems," added Megan Eisenstein, NATA's Director of Regulatory Affairs. NATA would like to thank Fisher Engineering for its assistance in the development of the Toolkit and for those NATA members and nonmembers who graciously donated their expertise and financial support of the initiative. For more information about NATA's Hangar Foam Fire Suppression System Initiative, please visit www.nata.aero/advocacy/foam. https://www.aviationpros.com/airports/buildings-maintenance/hangar-hangar-doors/press-release/21142039/national-air-transportation-association-nata-nata-releases-fire-marshal-toolkit-and-accidental-foam-discharge-checklist Back to Top Government publishes aviation COVID-19 guidance THE DEPARTMENT for Transport has published new aviation guidance, setting out measures operators should put in place to protect staff and passengers. The guidance, produced by the government's International Aviation Taskforce, in collaboration with the industry, also provides advice for passengers on how to travel safely and on how to follow social distancing measures at each stage of their journey. The guidance focuses extensively on the health and safety of passengers and staff and in line with international best practice, is the culmination of an extensive programme of engagement between the government, aviation industry and public health experts. It outlines a framework for the industry to operate from once travel restrictions are lifted and when it is safe to do so, helping to restore jobs, trade, and opportunities for travel. The guidance to passengers covers all aspects of the travel experience, from checking the public health requirements before booking a flight, to navigating the airport safely and boarding the flight or leaving the airport. Practical advice includes wearing face coverings when in the airport, washing hands regularly after touching any surfaces, checking in all baggage including hand luggage, and remaining seated as much as possible during the flight. The guidance to operators will also support staff by promoting safe practices and workplaces. This includes extensive cleaning of aircraft, increasing the availability of handwashing and hand sanitiser facilities, reducing face-to-face interactions with passengers, and introducing protocols for symptomatic passengers and staff. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, said: "Today's guidance is a positive next step towards ensuring a safer and more sustainable aviation sector. The government's advice currently remains to avoid all non-essential travel, but today we are taking the necessary steps to ensure a framework is in place for the aviation industry to bounce back when it is safe for restrictions on travel to be lifted." Tim Hawkins, Chief Strategy Officer at MAG, said: "This new guidance provides the basis for the restart and recovery of the UK aviation industry - it offers clear information for us, our passengers and our airlines on the steps needed to create a safe travel experience. "The guidance is the result of strong collaboration between government and the aviation industry, drawing on advice from independent medical and scientific experts who have looked specifically at what safety measures are needed at each stage of the travel process. "With similar protocols being adopted in other countries, and a targeted approach to reopening travel to low-risk countries, we will have the elements in place to get our economy moving again and protect jobs throughout the whole aviation supply chain." Government support for the aviation industry to date has provided an unprecedented package of measures, including a Bank of England scheme for firms to raise capital, Time to Pay flexibilities with tax bills, financial support for employees, and the formation of the International Aviation Taskforce - a collaborative approach between government and the aviation industry - which has been leading on work necessary to plan for the restart and recovery of the sector. https://www.hsmsearch.com/Government-aviation-COVID-19-guidance Back to Top Etihad Airways overhauls cabins on nearly 100 of its passenger aircraft Etihad Aviation's engineering department is conducting a massive cabin refurb project to refresh 96 of the airline's passenger jets while many remain grounded because of ongoing international travel restrictions. Etihad Engineering, the MRO arm of Etihad Aviation Group, is due to complete the project at the end of June and is carrying out cabin renovations, interior detailing, seat repairs and a full sweep of the inflight entertainment system. "The cabin refurbishment project is our most extensive collaboration with Etihad Airways to date," said Frederic Dupont, VP technical sales and customer service, Etihad Engineering. Etihad Engineering has expanded its operations during the Covid-19 pandemic as third-party customers have brought forward their maintenance checks while their aircraft sat idle on the tarmac. The current projects involve the delivery of cabin uplift, passenger to freighter conversion, longeron modification, heavy maintenance, major structural modification, parking solutions, painting and deep cleaning of aircraft for both Etihad Airways and third-party airline customers. "While the Covid-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the aviation sector at large, we have been doing our best to find the opportunity amidst the crisis," said Dupont. "We have taken advantage of the grounding period and used it to carry out maintenance services to ensure the entire fleet is operating at its optimal and will be uninterrupted by maintenance requirements as services return." Etihad Engineering has experienced an increase in parking requests from third-party customers, with the majority of parking slots currently occupied at its facilities. A number of airline operators have decided to park their aircraft in Abu Dhabi while they remain grounded from passenger operations. https://www.logisticsmiddleeast.com/transport/35654-etihad-airways-overhauls-cabins-on-nearly-100-of-its-passenger-aircraft Back to Top ZeroAvia's Val Miftakhov makes a compelling case for hydrogen aviation Everybody but the oil companies wants electric aviation to take off as quickly as possible, if you'll pardon the pun. The aviation industry is a huge polluter, and electric aircraft will not only be cleaner, but significantly cheaper in terms of energy and maintenance. The problem is batteries, whose terrible energy density is simply not up to any practical aeronautical purpose at this stage, and there's no guarantee that the vast amounts of research going on in the battery sector will change that any time soon. Many companies are now starting to view hydrogen as the answer. Batteries are still a much better solution for 99 percent of car usage, but hydrogen's outstanding energy density makes it a much better proposition for anything that flies, and you don't need to build a massive distribution network to commence medium-range hydrogen flights. Indeed, if you can get electricity to an airport, you can generate your hydrogen right there on site. We caught up with Val Miftakhov, founder and CEO of ZeroAvia, a company that's betting heavy on hydrogen in the aviation space. Where some are focused on the short-range eVTOL air taxi market, ZeroAvia is getting started on mid-range regional flights by developing and retro-fitting fuel cell powertrains to small, 10-20 seat passenger planes. The company says it can reduce costs by as much as 50 percent on this kind of operation. If you're in doubt that hydrogen aviation is going to be a thing, Miftakhov makes an excellent case for it in the lightly edited transcript below. He's not competing with batteries, he's competing with jet fuel, and the numbers look like they might really stack up in the very near future. We'll let Miftakhov take it from here in his own words. New Atlas: Hi Val, where are you speaking to us from? Miftakhov: I'm in Cranfield, UK, we have a location here at a small airport belonging to Cranfield University, one of the best aerospace schools in Europe. Cranfield Aerospace Solutions is one of the partners for us and we're doing some of our testing here. Can you sum up how ZeroAvia came to be and where you're at right now? My background is in physics, management consulting, Google, Uber, then I started my previous company in the electric vehicle space, eMotorWerks - we became the largest vehicle-to-grid integration company out there. That company was acquired two years ago and that's when I started ZeroAvia. I'm a pilot myself, a private pilot flying airplanes and helicopters, so it's a personal passion for me. Having spent a number of years in the zero-emissions transport space, it made a lot of sense to focus on aviation, look at what sustainability in aviation might look like and how we can bring it to the world. We thought early on about how we can address the large existing segments of aviation. There are a lot of companies focusing on urban air mobility, flying cars and so forth. We thought that these are all great projects, interesting technologically, but they wouldn't do anything to our emissions footprint in the existing aviation segment. If you're flying from Melbourne to Sydney, that's not going to be helped by any of the flying car companies today. That was the motivation: how we can start bringing those segments into the zero emissions world. Once you do the math, and start trying to understand what technologies you can use to get there, pretty quickly you'll zoom in on hydrogen-fuel-cell-based powertrains. There's nothing else that really works that well. Batteries are too heavy, biofuels cannot scale, hybrids with turbine engines don't really make sense - you're increasing the complexity of the powertrain for relatively limited gain on longer trips. What remains are hydrogen-based propulsion methods. One is hydrogen-electric, and that's what we're doing with fuel cells. Another is synthetic fuel, which uses the same turbines as you have in aircraft today, but produces fuel from hydrogen into synthetic liquid jet fuel. The latter is more expensive, requires more energy and still has all the disadvantages of liquid fuel burning: particulate emissions, nitrogen oxides, turbine engine maintenance and so forth. We think that hydrogen-electric is going to be the dominant force over time in clean aviation, and that's why we're doing it. So where are you at with it? We started at the end of 2017. In 2018, we put the initial team together and started ground testing of our powertrain. It's a California company, with a UK subsidiary. In February 2019, in the US, we put the first version of our powertrain in an aircraft, a six-seat, two-ton Piper Malibu M330. We got initial FAA certification on that prototype, and got it up in the air in the spring of last year. Started flight testing, learned a lot. Earlier this year, we built the second prototype here in the UK. The UK operation is supported partially by government grants here from the Aerospace Technology Institute. Now I'm here in Cranfield kicking off flight testing for the second prototype. Do you see any specific barriers to certification for hydrogen-electric powertrains? Well, the main barrier really is the lack of standards for these new powertrains. If you build a new piston engine or a new turbine engine, you have a testing book. You can show up to the certification authorities and they'll pull out the book and say right, these are the tests we need to run, this is how long we need to run your engine, under these parameters, and everything is described. When you design and test the engine before the certification, you'll know what to expect. From a technology and physics perspective, there are no physical barriers. Val Miftakhov In the case of new engine types, and that includes battery-electric and any others that aren't traditional engines, and definitely hydrogen-electric, you don't have a book. So first and foremost, you need to work with the regulators to write the book. That's what we're doing now already with the FAA in the US and the CAA here in the UK, so that in 12-18 months, we can show up with a system that we think can be certified, and there will be a book against which it can be tested. So this is the main barrier. From a technology and physics perspective, there are no physical barriers. I was talking to the HyPoint turbo air-cooled fuel cell guys a couple of weeks ago. There seems to be a perception out there that a hydrogen powerplant is inherently dangerous in an aviation context. Can you speak to that? Yeah, the HyPoint guys are great. We're partnering with them on a couple of things. But this is a frequently asked question for sure. A lot of times people bring up the Hindenburg from 80 years ago. But technology has moved on quite a bit. Today, on the ground, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are a real thing. Since about five years ago, Toyota started pushing hydrogen cars onto the market to regular consumers, with fueling and everything. So there's now maybe 15,000 hydrogen vehicles in circulation on the ground worldwide, plus maybe 30-35,000 material-handling equipment. Not in the air, but the technology, the storage and utilization of hydrogen in those vehicles is similar to what you have in the air. Fuel cell tech with compressed hydrogen storage that you produce electricity out of. In our conversations with the FAA and CAA, hydrogen is something they find to be more conceptually similar to the other chemical fuels, compared to batteries. In the hydrogen-based powertrain, you have fuel storage where fuel is kept separate from the oxidizer - the air - at all times, except for a very small amount that flows in the fuel cell. That's versus batteries; what makes people worry is that the fuel and oxidizer are all in one package, impossible to separate if something goes wrong. So you have these runaway effects in large-scale, high-energy-density batteries that are very hard to contain. Once a battery fire starts, for example, it's very difficult to stop. So it's conceptually quite different and, if anything, the certification authorities are unclear about how to deal with batteries as opposed to chemical-based fuels like hydrogen. Then you look at things like ignition temperature of hydrogen - much higher than jet fuel. It's practically impossible to pool hydrogen in one place, or maintain a concentration in the open air. It's very lightweight, it escapes very quickly. Jet fuel and aviation gasoline have vapors that are really heavy, and they concentrate around the leaked fuel. Those can ignite much more easily. So there are some fundamentals for hydrogen that are actually better than jet fuel from a safety perspective. Of course, we'll need to do the right amount of testing and so forth. But we're pretty optimistic. So obviously, liquid hydrogen or compressed hydrogen can have a far greater energy density than a lithium battery at this point. But how does it compare, energy-density-wise, to something like jet fuel? On the energy density per kilogram, it's very good. From a chemical energy or primary energy perspective, hydrogen is about three times better. Every kilogram of fuel contains three times more energy. You get additional benefits from using it in a fuel cell, because small internal combustion engines are not efficient. You have typical efficiency of 25-30 percent for a piston engine or small turbine engine. In a fuel cell, you can have a 60-percent efficiency, and the entire powertrain can be about twice as efficient as compared to a classic internal combustion engine. So now you have a six times advantage in terms of the propulsion you can derive from one kilogram of fuel. The challenge with hydrogen is to store that fuel. A classic way to store it is with compressed gas cylinders. The ones that we're using, the tank technology allows us to achieve about 10-11 percent mass fraction, mass fraction being what percentage of weight of your tank system is actually fuel. So only 10 percent of our total tank weight is fuel. In order to store one kilogram of fuel, we need 10 kilograms of fuel system. That's an immediate factor of 10 reduction to our energy density per kilogram, so your six times advantage takes a 10 times disadvantage, and it works out to about half the utility of the jet fuel for the same mass of fuel system if you're using compressed hydrogen. That highlights where the challenge really is at the system level with hydrogen. It's a very energy-efficient, energy-dense fuel, but containing it and storing it onboard is a real challenge. That's why people think about various liquid hydrogen technologies that allow you to get mass fractions above 30 percent, three times better. Aerospace tanks used in rockets, for example, have mass fractions of 70-90 percent, but would, shall we say, require some modifications before you take them into the aircraft (laughs). Even at a 30-percent mass fraction, which is relatively achievable in liquid hydrogen storage, you'd have the utility of a hydrogen system higher than a jet fuel system on a per-kilogram basis. ... there's significantly more hydrogen in one liter of water than in one liter of liquid hydrogen. Val Miftakhov The only remaining challenge that you'll have at that stage is volume. Hydrogen, even in liquid form, is not very dense in terms of how many kilograms you can store in a unit of volume. Your tanks need to get bigger. The fun fact, I guess, that's sometimes amusing, is that there's significantly more hydrogen in one liter of water than in one liter of liquid hydrogen. It's so lightweight that even when you liquefy it, it's just 80 grams per liter. Twelve times less density than a liter of water, and about nine times less than jet fuel. And if you introduce that factor, you've got to build a larger airframe, which then adds to the weight again? That's right. So the way we're approaching it initially is to say we're just going to take a hit on the max range of the vehicle. All the benefits of zero emissions and lower costs of fuel and maintenance are great, and we're going to deliver them with about half of the max range of a fossil fuel vehicle. Our first targets in terms of aircraft are 10-20-seat aircraft, for example Cessna Caravans, Twin Otters, single- or twin-engine aircraft carrying 10-20 people. Those airframes are typically designed for about 1,000-mile (1,609-km) endurance on jet fuel. We'll be able to deliver a range of about 500 miles (805 km) in a 10-20 passenger aircraft using compressed hydrogen storage. And that, we think we can put into commercial utilization within about three years. So yeah, the point is, there's a way to deliver a very meaningful utility to the market with this type of powertrain in a very short timeframe. That's what we're really excited about. And it can scale beyond those initial aircraft and ranges through utilization of liquid hydrogen and more efficient fuel cells. OK. So your initial plan is to buy regular aircraft and retrofit them, or will you design your own airframes? We're an engine company, so we'll produce powertrains or engines that could go into various types of aircraft. Initially probably into existing aircraft on a retrofit basis. And from the start, some will go to new aircraft, say as people build new Cessna airplanes and send them to FedEx, for example - they're a big customer for Textron or Cessna, and flies possibly the largest fleet of small aircraft worldwide, for transporting packages into remote locations. That's a great example where we could go and re-power the fleet, so to speak, and as new aircraft get purchased, we could also power them. Over time, especially as we move into the larger airframes, we expect the manufacturers to begin to optimize their airframes for this new propulsion type, just as happened with jet engines mid-last century. Initially it was applied to airframes that looked the same as the propeller planes, but they soon began morphing the aircraft to increase the advantages of that type of propulsion. We're going to see the same thing here. We'll start to see higher volume airframes, some manufacturers are already experimenting with some things. Airbus MAVERIC, if you've seen an announcement a couple of months ago, they're doing some flight testing on a couple of small prototypes with a wing-body design that has a lot of volume. Great for storage of a fuel like this. We're going to see more distributed propulsion, which is easy to do with electric powertrains, since you can separate a large number of motors around and not suffer the efficiency and complexity penalties you have trying to do the same with turbine engines. Small turbines are less efficient than big ones, so every time you break one large engine down into two smaller ones, you lose efficiency, and you take a double hit when you have to do twice the maintenance. That's one reason why you're seeing the retirement of a lot of the four-engine aircraft like the 747, in favor of planes with two large engines. With electric, you don't have that problem, you can scale very easily up and down, and aerodynamically distributed propulsion makes a lot of sense. You can make a much more efficient aircraft by placing more propulsive elements around the airframe. So that's going to happen over time. But initially, you take the existing types of aircraft in the installed base, and you start re-powering them. Initially propeller planes? Initially, yes. What other options are there down the track apart from props and ducted fans? You can only get up to a certain speed with a propeller, yeah? It's true. That's an interesting question. The semantics is a big tricky, but maybe you can say you have three types of propulsive element types. Propellers, where all thrust comes from a propeller. Then you have jet engines of various types, where they thrust comes mostly from the jet exhaust - those are not speed constrained, but not very efficient. Then there's turbofan engines, which are kind of a hybrid in between. Part of the thrust coming from the jet exhaust, part of the thrust coming from the rotating propulsor, which is structured as a fan to work better in high speed environments. But still subsonic. That's what exists today. We probably won't see supersonic electrified any time soon. Val Miftakhov To go supersonic, you almost always need relatively low bypass engines; you have high exhaust velocity, so a significant proportion of the exhaust needs to be composed out of the jet exhaust high-speed air. You can blend some of the low speed fan-pushed air, but not a huge fraction. For the initial time for sure, we're going to see similar approaches in electric. We probably won't see supersonic electrified any time soon. Will this technology be able to go as fast as an airliner? They get around at 900-plus km/h (559-plus mph), how fast can a hydrogen plane be in comparison? You can definitely mate the electric motors to a fan like you'd find in a typical turbofan engine on a classic 737 or whatever. It's just a matter of what propulsor you use, instead of a propeller you can use a fan and rotate that. With time, maybe within 10-15 years, we can get there. We, meaning ZeroAvia as a company. We can get to a turbofan replacement engine that can be fitted into something like a 737 and propel it to similar speeds to what they do today. From a physics perspective, the energy density is in a good place, the storage is possible with liquid hydrogen, to match or exceed the energy content of jet fuel. All those things are possible given enough engineering time. So definitely subsonic, but we see hydrogen matching the utility of the jet-fuel aircraft over time. For smaller aircraft, it'll be sooner, so the first product to production is three years out. Probably five or six years, we'll see similar ranges to jet fuel in small aircraft. In 15 years, let's say, we're going to see similar ranges in larger aircraft. These are all relatively small amounts of time in the aviation world, where they typical lifespan of a vehicle is 30 years. If you sell a brand new 737 today, it'll be just retiring in 2050. So on that timeframe, within a generation, within that 30 years, you can give all forms of air travel a hydrogen-electric option. It's a matter of how quickly it gets adopted. That depends on government policies, cost of technology, cost of fuel, prevalence of fuel and all those things. But it's technologically possible over that period of time to have solutions for all segments. Do you have a sense, taking the FedEx model you raised earlier, of what sort of cost savings an operator might enjoy based on the reduced maintenance, cheaper fuel, all that sort of thing? This is a bit of a moving target, as the cost of green hydrogen is reducing quite quickly. The learning curve is just starting on green hydrogen electrolysis, it's getting cheaper. Energy is already pretty cheap from the renewable assets. So already, three years out from our first commercial offering, we're easily seeing hydrogen at equivalent jet fuel prices around US$1.50 per gallon. I talk in terms of equivalent prices, because when I talk about it as $2.50 per kilogram, nobody has any reference. So we convert it into the equivalent jet fuel price, meaning it gives the same amount of mobility. Passenger kilometers. How much jet fuel you'd burn, and that converts to the price of hydrogen. So $1.50, which is lower than what we've seen over the last few years for even large operators like FedEx and major airlines. Of course, now, during COVID-19, with the oil prices a little on the low side, the jet fuel will be a little bit cheaper. But already it gives you an idea that hydrogen is quite competitive on the fuel price even three years out. And when you talk about 10-15 years out, when electrolysis equipment and renewable energy is at lower cost than today, you can see for smaller operators, easily a 50-70 percent advantage. For larger operators, maybe a 20-40 percent advantage. One of the interesting benefits on top of that is stability of pricing. The volatility of jet fuel price is a big problem for the aviation industry in general, and people have all kinds of hedging schemes that cost money. With this, you won't have to do that. If you're sourcing your fuel from electricity, then there's potentially multiple sources, and renewable electricity is relatively reliable over time. That's an interesting advantage there. On the maintenance side, it's an electric powertrain - electric motors and energy distribution - which is much more reliable in general than internal combustion engines. You see that in cars; what happens is you just stop going to the mechanic if you have an EV. You can have it for three years and never have to do anything with it. That's not a good look for internal combustion. There are very few moving parts and everything just works, and it's kind of similar for the aviation side of electric powertrains. We see at least a 30-50 percent improvement in the times to overhaul, and even bigger improvements for smaller engines. The overhauls would be cheaper than for today's jet engines, because the main thing you'd be worrying about is the hydrogen fuel cell stack, which is only a part of the powertrain, and can be made in a relatively modular way so you can diagnose and replace it pretty easily when you need it, which would again be over a longer timeframe. What about the fueling side? Obviously it's a new kind of fuel, so we need to build or orchestrate the fueling infrastructure around it. There's a lot of comparison that people make to the ground-based hydrogen fueling infrastructure for cars, which had a lot of challenges being built out across the world. It'll be a much easier situation here with aircraft. You have relatively few locations you need to enable worldwide: the airports, right? You know where they are, and the energy consumption is quite concentrated. That's a very different situation compared to ground transport, where everything is highly distributed. You need to place a lot of low-volume stations, which kills your economics. Here, in aviation, you can start with a limited number of locations, work with initial operators, and scale from there. It's a much more scalable way to introduce a new fuel, and it works quite well even at low scale. So it's a very different proposition to ground mobility, and I think it'll play to the advantage of hydrogen aviation. Assuming some of these sites will be electrolyzing water into hydrogen on site at an airport, how quick is that process? Would you need large storage facilities on site, or could you almost electrolyze straight into the aircraft's fuel tanks? There's an optimal amount of storage, depending on your energy source. Typically, you'd have at least a couple of days' worth of storage on-site, or near-site, and you'd dispense from there. There are economic reasons for that too; you ideally want to minimize the electrolyzer size, as that's directly related to capital expense, so you'd provide a 24/7 electricity source and have the electrolyzer running near its max setting full time. The way you provide that 24/7 renewable power source is you have some battery storage on site, so it might allow you to take your standard five or six hours of solar per day and spread it out over a 24-hour period, and do that every day. So there are some system optimization algorithms we're working on with our fueling partners to minimize the end cost of the fuel. That's how you get to the really good numbers that compete with jet fuel. Solar on site at an airport? You'd need a lot of space. We've done a few back-of-the-envelope calculations for a lot of different airports, and we've found for the vast majority of the south-western United States (and probably the same for Australia actually), you can re-power all regional flights with the electrolysis generated from solar energy from solar panels located only within airport property. There's a large amount of unused space at airports, and if you covered it with solar panels, the energy would be sufficient to re-power all regional flights out of those airports - regional meaning sub-500 mile flights. So there's already an amount of space available. Now, will you be able to put that large of a solar array on the airport property, near the runways and all that? That's a question. But the space is there. I guess I always figured that space was there for a reason. Well, you can't build anything tall there. It has to be on the ground. No structures, pretty much, in that space. But solar panels lying on the ground would clear the height requirements. Then you'd have things like reflections off the solar panels that you'd need to deal with. But from a height perspective, you wouldn't have a problem. And you need to have access of course, to runways and taxi ways, so you'd need to figure that out, but I think that's doable. But if anything, solar panels are probably the easiest thing to place on the ground at an airport. Generally, the reason that airports have that much space on the ground is that they typically have multiple runways, which are at angles to one another due to the wind directions. Take SFO International, that has four runways, two pairs at almost 90 degrees to one another, because the wind direction changes. You always want to be taking off or landing your aircraft into the wind, so they switch runways when the wind changes. So if the runways are two miles long, then you have a 2x2-mile surface, give or take. That's the main reason why the surface requirements are so high for large airports. And even smaller airports, a lot of times, have multiple runways at angles, and they have a lot of space. The airport we're using for our flight testing in the US, Hollister, has two runways at about a 70-degree angle, and even that small airport takes up a lot of space. That space can be used, and probably will be used over time, for some useful purpose. We hope it'll be generating the electricity for hydrogen planes. We thank Val Miftakhov for taking the time to speak to us. https://newatlas.com/aircraft/interview-zeroavia-val-miftakhov-hydrogen-aviation/ Back to Top SpaceX launches 58 more Starlink satellites and 3 Planet Skysats for first rideshare launch SpaceX has launched its latest batch of Starlink satellites, growing the constellation by another 58 spacecraft just 10 days after its most recent Starlink launch. That brings the total number of operational Starlink broadband internet satellites on orbit to 538. SpaceX also split the payload for this Starlink mission for the first time, giving up two of its usual Starlink payload complement in order to also carry three Planet Skysat spacecraft on behalf of that client. SpaceX's latest Starlink launch was significant not only because it brings the company closer to its goal of actually operating a consumer-facing broadband internet service, which it hopes to begin doing for a limited pool of customers in the U.S. and Canada by later this year, but also because these Starlink satellites carried new modifications designed to make them more astronomer-friendly. Starlink, because of its size and the relatively low-altitude orbit that they traverse, has been criticized by nighttime scientific observers because they present a potentially bright distraction as they pass overhead. SpaceX launched one Starlink satellite equipped with a new deployable sun visor it created that can block reflections of sunlight off of their antenna surfaces, and on this launch, each of the 58 satellites was outfitted with this new mitigating technology. Starlink Mission Hopefully, that means that Starlink can now exist more harmoniously with scientists who rely on Earth-based observation of the stars and night sky, but the ultimately proof will be in what difference these solar visors make when deployed in volume among the Starlink constellation. This mission was also the first conducted under SpaceX's formalized SmallSat Rideshare Program, which offers small satellite operators a chance to book a ride aboard an upcoming SpaceX launch in a relatively flexible, 'on-demand' manner using a web portal SpaceX created for the purpose. SpaceX's efforts to offer more value to the rideshare business reflects a recognition that other launch providers like Rocket Lab, which tailor specifically to that market segment, are significant potential competition to its overall bottom line. The launch today, which occurred at 5:21 AM EDT (2:21 AM PDT) also included a recovery landing of the Falcon 9 first stage booster used to propel the payload to space. This booster also previously flew on two of SpaceX's Dragon cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station. https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/13/spacex-launches-58-more-starlink-satellites-and-3-planet-skysats-for-first-rideshare-launch/ Curt Lewis