FORT WORTH — Air Lease Corporation executive chairman Steven Udvar-Hazy sees a future for clean, hydrogen-powered aircraft, but reckons it will take several decades before the technology is fully commercially viable, and ready to replace modern jets.
A pioneer of the aircraft leasing industry, Udvar-Hazy discussed the future of flight on 13 December at Recaro Aircraft Seating Americas’ 25th Anniversary celebration in Fort Worth, Texas.
”The current-technology jet engines are very close to [their] ultimate limit, and those limits are because of physics, temperatures, alloys that can only withstand a certain amount of heat. So, maybe we have another 10% to 15% room for growth in terms of fuel efficiency of current-generation jet engines,” he said, adding:
So, there’s multiple paths. One is electric. However, with the weight and complexity of multiple battery systems, it’s hard to foresee that batteries could power aircraft that could fly from, say, Dallas to London.
So, the other avenue is hydrogen. Hydrogen offers a clean fuel that could really have applications in commercial aviation once they’re proven in military aircraft and other industrial applications.
But these things will take several decades to be commercially, economically and financially viable.
Airbus and its partners are among those at the forefront of developing hydrogen-powered aircraft and the infrastructure required to support them.
In 2020, the European airframer announced plans to introduce its own hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft by 2035, releasing three concepts in the regional to small airliner category — a turboprop, a turbofan and a blended wing body aircraft — as part of its “ZEROe” zero-emissions programme. Also that year, Airbus launched the so-called ‘Hydrogen Hub at Airports’ network to drive research into infrastructure requirements and low-carbon airport operations across the value chain.
Its work continued, and by late last year Airbus revealed it is developing a hydrogen-powered fuel cell engine which is expected to be flight-tested on board its A380 MSN1 testbed aircraft (the ZEROe demonstrator aircraft) towards the middle of the decade, though company CEO Guillaume Faury did warn more broadly that a lack of availability of clean hydrogen, or the appropriate infrastructure to support such, could delay the ZEROe programme.
The Hydrogen Hub at Airports network, meanwhile, continues to grow. Early this month, Hamburg Airport became the first German and the 12th member of the network, joining other airports, airlines and energy sectors.
For Udvar-Hazy, “[T]here are new technologies that will ultimately in 40 or 50 years, significantly replace what we see out there today. And the young people in the room will be proud participants in that transformation,” he told Recaro Aircraft Seating Americas’ employees who had gathered with leadership, VIPs and members of media to celebrate the Fort Worth, Texas-based facility’s 25th Anniversary.
“Over the next 15 to 20 years, I don’t see any radical technological changes.”
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Featured image credited to Airbus
