December 14, 2020 - No. 94 In This Issue : British Airways Wants Hydrogen Flight Revolution To Come Sooner : Can Shell help pilot a new era of sustainable aviation? : Aviation group Star Alliance says it’s going all-in on Amazon’s cloud : Electric airplanes are getting tantalizingly close to a commercial breakthrough : United Airlines bets on direct air capture to reduce CO2 impact : Canadian Airports Council Echoes Urgent Call For Airline Support : Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Approved for Use On U.S. Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers : Nordic nations set the pace in push for electric planes : Making flying safe: The evolution of DAA in unmanned drones : France to oblige airlines to use green but expensive biofuel : Indonesia courts SpaceX as new rocket launch site British Airways Wants Hydrogen Flight Revolution To Come Sooner Environmental discourses are becoming increasingly prevalent in the airline industry. As such, carriers are looking to develop more sustainable aviation technology. British Airways is one such airline. Its fleet’s efficiency has recently received a boost in the form of the premature retirement of its Boeing 747 aircraft. Now, it is looking to accelerate the development of hydrogen-powered flight. Collaboration with an industry leader In a press release published earlier today, British Airways announced its intention to “speed up the switch to hydrogen-powered passenger aircraft.” It will do so through a partnership with ZeroAvia, a “leading innovator in decarbonizing commercial aviation.” Through remote work, it plans to explore the concept of utilizing zero-emission hydrogen fuel with industry experts. The partnership will come under the wider umbrella of the International Airlines Group’s (IAG) ‘Hangar 51’ accelerator program. This scheme looks to assist smaller start-ups worldwide. It does so by giving them the opportunity to test and develop their projects on a larger scale within IAG’s operations. The partnership is an exciting proposition for ZeroAvia. Its Head of Europe, Sergey Kiselev, stated that: “ZeroAvia’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to truly zero emissions flight and we believe hydrogen is the best way to quickly and practically achieve this.” Successful test flight In September 2020, ZeroAvia made a significant step towards realizing its goal. At this time, it saw a six-seat Piper Malibu single-engine turboprop aircraft depart under hydrogen-power from Cranfield Airport in Bedfordshire, UK. The aircraft, which bears the registration G-HYZA, had been retrofitted with a hydrogen fuel cell to enable the zero-emissions flight. In this test flight, the aircraft successfully completed a full pattern circuit of the airfield, circling it twice. Moving forward, ZeroAvia is hoping its next hydrogen-powered trip will be a longer 250-mile jaunt from Scotland’s Orkney Islands. In the long-term, the innovator is looking to target 10-20 seat aircraft with a range of up to 500 miles. Long-term commitment to sustainability British Airways CEO Sean Doyle underlined the airline’s commitment to a sustainable future in the press release. Indeed, it has set itself the target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. United Airlines also shares this aspiration for its operations. In terms of specific timescales, Mr. Doyle stated: “In the short-term, this means improving our operational efficiency and introducing carbon offset and removal projects. In the medium to longer-term, we’re investing in the development of sustainable aviation fuel and looking at how we can help accelerate the growth of new technologies such as zero-emissions hydrogen-powered aircraft.” The project will also consider the passenger aspect of potential hydrogen-powered commercial flights. British Airways’ Director of External Communications & Sustainability, Louise Evans, stated that: “During the partnership, as well as assessing the environmental advantages of the technology, we will also be exploring the operational, commercial and customer experience improvements that can be achieved.” Despite recent improvements to commercial aircraft engines, the fact remains that they still consume large amounts of fossil fuel. It is perhaps unlikely that we will see a ‘hydrogen revolution‘ in the short-term. Nonetheless, the concept remains a fascinating prospect for environmentally-conscious aviation stakeholders. https://simpleflying.com/british-airways-hydrogen-flight-revolution/ Can Shell help pilot a new era of sustainable aviation? One of the world’s largest oil and gas companies is betting that the future of flying is carbon-neutral. That may seem an audacious notion from a company whose business model for well over a century has centered around bringing fossil fuels to market — and is banking on petroleum being a key, albeit declining, fuel for decades to come. And it may seem unlikely that an industry as carbon-intensive as aviation — a hard-to-abate sector, in the argot of the climate policy crowd — might somehow emerge with its green credentials flying high in a climate-constrained world. But we’re collectively traversing uncharted territory during unprecedented times, creating unparalleled opportunities to transform some of our most unsustainable systems. Over the past year, I’ve been working with Royal Dutch Shell’s aviation division — a relatively small slice of the $344 billion (2019 revenue) energy behemoth — to develop a series of video interviews focusing on what it will take to make aviation sustainable. (I was paid by Shell for this work but not to write this article, which has not been reviewed by the company.) Along the way, I’ve spoken with airline consultants, fuel producers, carbon offset experts and industry critics, as well as with Shell executives, to understand the technologies and market drivers that could, over time, enable aviation to align with other industries in meeting the terms of the 2015 Paris climate agreement. While I’m not yet convinced aviation can become truly sustainable, I’m encouraged that there is at least a flight path pointed toward that destination. It’s been a fascinating journey. And while I’m not yet convinced aviation can become truly sustainable, I’m encouraged that there is at least a flight path pointed toward that destination. In some respects, this couldn’t have been a worse time for these conversations. Although it certainly wasn’t planned, the interviews I conducted during 2020 largely coincided with the aviation sector’s worst downturn in history. The global industry has been losing tens of millions of dollars a day and has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs. Passenger volumes took a nosedive, down precipitously from 2019 levels. The global market for business travel is projected to decline 54 percent during 2020, according to data by ResearchAndMarkets.com, which predicts a robust recovery for the industry — by 2027. Leisure travel was down even more. Only the air cargo business is up. And yet the conversation about sustainable aviation continues to maintain altitude. Some of that is driven by CORSIA, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, a 2016 agreement governing international flights, developed by the 191-nation International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a United Nations body. CORSIA applies only to international flights, which account for the majority of aviation’s carbon footprint and around 1.3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to ICAO. The goal was to have carbon-neutral growth beginning next year — that is, to decouple greenhouse gas emissions from increases in air travel. Thanks to the pandemic, ICAO changed the baseline of CORSIA to include only 2019’s emissions, as opposed to the original plan to use an average of the sector’s emissions during 2019 and 2020, which would have set the emissions cap much lower due to the 2020 downturn. Fuels rush in CORSIA has helped catalyze a new generation of biofuels and carbon offsets, the two primary tools for reducing the aviation industry’s contribution to climate change. Shell, which has been in both the biofuels and offsets business for years, saw an opening. Its aviation division — which has provided fuel and lubricants for airports and airlines almost since the dawn of commercial aviation, and today serves about 900 airports in 60 countries — began a concerted effort to seize the moment. The push to become a sustainable aviation solutions supplier also aligned with the company’s ambition, announced to investors in April, to become a net-zero-emissions energy business by 2050. Shell is just one of several oil companies eyeing new business opportunities in sustainable aviation, particularly at a time of flat or declining outlooks for petroleum-based fuels. In addition to Shell, oil majors including BP, Chevron, Eni, Neste, Phillips and Total are vying for a piece of the action in sustainable aviation, often in partnership with smaller renewable fuel producers, including Aemetis, Fulcrum BioEnergy, SkyNRG, Sundrop Fuels, Velocys and World Energy. “We have been focusing with the industry to make sure we are ready when our customers need us and we can go back and fly again,” Anna Mascolo, president of global aviation at Shell, told me. “At the same time, what is also becoming very clear is that society, individuals and companies also feel an obligation to make sure that we look at long-term targets and ambitions like sustainability.” Part of Shell’s quest is to become a leading purveyor of sustainable aviation fuel — SAF, for short — that is slowly but surely making its way into the airplane-fueling pipeline. SAF can be made from a variety of materials and byproducts, from agricultural waste and specially grown crops to used oils, inedible fats and everyday household trash. SAF is what’s called a drop-in fuel, meaning it can substitute one-to-one for traditional, kerosene-based jet fuel, known as Jet A, though current technologies limit the percentage of SAF to no more than about 50 percent on a given flight. That’s a largely theoretical limit. Because of SAF’s higher price and limited availability, most planes currently flying with SAF operate with a blend of less than 1 percent SAF — barely enough to justify bragging rights. Most SAF is deployed in Europe and in California, where policy initiatives provide incentives for SAF and other low-carbon fuels. Supply, meet demand Even with incentives, SAF can be a tough sell. “Historically, what CEOs and aviation companies have done is send demand signals through their willingness to enter into offtake contracts with potential producers,” explained Bryan Sherbacow, chief commercial officer at World Energy, which produces SAF at a facility about 15 miles east of Los Angeles International Airport. “The issue,” he said, “is that the price sensitivity within those contracts is such that they’re saying, ‘If you can produce it at a price that’s comparable to my current opportunity, then we’ll buy as much as you can produce.’ So, while the demand is there, if we can’t drop the price to be competitive with existing fuels today, that demand diminishes.” The “price sensitivity” Sherbacow speaks of is no small thing. A gallon of SAF can cost up to five times that of Jet A, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics, and it’s unlikely that market forces alone can bring that down to the point where the demand for SAF could justify dramatically scaling up production. Given that fuel is an airline’s second-biggest expense after labor, SAF’s price premium is pretty much a show-stopper, at least without incentives. Incentives notwithstanding, getting the price down will take the engagement of Big Oil, Sherbacow told me — “an incumbent industry that has entrenched relationships, entrenched cost structures, entrenched incentives.” World Energy has become a key partner of Shell Aviation. Earlier this year, the two companies signed a multiyear agreement to develop a scalable supply of SAF. It’s one of several partnerships in which both companies have participated. In November, for example, Shell, World Energy and Amsterdam-based SkyNRG announced they would partner with aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce to test the potential for using 100 percent SAF in future engines. There is no shortage of collaborations seeking to jumpstart markets for SAF. There is no shortage of such collaborations seeking to jumpstart markets for SAF. For example, there’s the well-pedigreed Clean Skies for Tomorrow Coalition, with the goal “to align on a transition to sustainable aviation fuels.” It is led by the World Economic Forum, Rocky Mountain Institute and the Energy Transitions Commission, along with industry players Airbus, Boeing, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Amsterdam’s Airport Schiphol, London’s Heathrow Airport, Shell, SkyNRG and SpiceJet. There’s also the Jet Zero Council, a UK government initiative led by Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Shell “to fast-track zero-emission flight.” “Collaboration is really going to be key,” Mascolo said. That applies to more than passenger airlines. Another significant Shell partnership is with Amazon. In July, the logistics and retail giant announced plans to buy 6 million gallons of SAF from Shell over 12 months. The fuel will be produced by World Energy and made from agricultural waste fats and oils, such as used cooking oil and inedible fats from beef processing. “As our operation continues to expand and continues to become more visible — whether that's with trucks on the road, vans on the road or with aircraft — our carbon footprint is becoming more visible,” Raoul Sreenivasan, director of planning and performance at Amazon Air, explained during a panel at the VERGE 20 conference in October. “And our research does tell us that for customers, specifically in the U.S. and in Europe, this is a top-of-mind issue.” Amazon’s two biggest U.S. competitors, UPS and Fedex, are similarly ramping up SAF for their cargo planes. Amazon's SAF purchase is likely a drop in the bucket of its overall aviation fuel spend — the company doesn’t disclose its annual fuel consumption — but these types of demand signals are critical in creating long-term markets for SAF. Going neutral, naturally Fuel is only part of the sustainable aviation equation, especially in the short to mid term. “The technologies and the fuels are not available in quantity today to enable the airlines to get immediately on the trajectory of transforming to net-zero,” explained Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, who focuses on aviation issues. “So, you need offsets as a bridge to help them to get to that trajectory. But the offsets have to meet rigorous quality standards. Otherwise, they won't actually be helping the planet.” The technologies and the fuels are not available in quantity today to enable the airlines to get immediately on the trajectory of transforming to net-zero. The demand for high-quality carbon offsets has been growing steadily in recent years, thanks in part to the spate of net-zero commitments put forth by companies, industries, cities and nations. And that’s just for voluntary offsets. There’s a much larger compliance market, where utilities and other regulated entities buy and “retire” offsets to meet certain mandatory caps. The most active compliance program is the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism, the source of offsets for Kyoto Protocol signatory nations, as well as buyers in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. Nearly 20 years ago, in 2001, Shell set out to become a player here, too, establishing a network of offset trading desks around the world. “My day starts in the New Zealand market,” Bill McGrath, general manager of global environmental products at Shell, explained to me recently from his base in London. He oversees the company’s offset trading operations, which are housed in London, Shanghai, Singapore and San Diego. Traders follow the sun, making deals during the business day in Australia, Korea, China, Europe, South Africa and, finally, the Americas. One of the main drivers for all this activity is Shell’s own global operations, many of which sit within jurisdictions that are part of emissions trading schemes. To meet its obligations in those places, Shell needs access to tens of millions of tons of offsets annually. “We have refineries that are emitting five or six million tons of carbon dioxide per annum, and we have to manage the allowance system around that and trade with other entities to ensure that we can comply with the requirements of those systems,” David Hone, Shell's chief climate change adviser, explained. “It's quite a big business.” The central focus of Shell’s offsets are what’s known as nature-based solutions — afforestation, reforestation and various other ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using natural processes, Hone said. “We are channeling something like $300 million of investment into our own forestry projects and turning that into units that we can provide to the aviation industry to offset their emissions.” Offset prices are all over the map, from $3 per ton to $40 or more, with the price often, but not always, synonymous with quality. And while there are organizations setting de facto global standards for offset quality, they are not yet universal. Both price and quality issues have hindered the market uptake of offsets, though that's changing. As the market for voluntary offsets ramps up, McGrath believes price and quality will become more predictable. “One of the things that spurs developers is getting clarity about what the forward price and forward volume of demand is. When that arises, investment flows. So, one of the things that may emerge by 2025 is far greater clarity about the volume and price that offsetting commands on the buy side, so that the supply side can respond.” Carbon offsets aren’t universally loved, and the markets can be complicated and unnecessarily opaque. And they may not be needed to make aviation sustainable as much as some people think. Last week, United Airlines committed to zero out its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 — without using offsets. (The company also announced that it holds more than half of all "publicly announced future purchase commitments to using SAF.") Still, offset markets will become an increasing fact of life for more and more industries and companies that set their sights on net-zero emissions. That’s especially true for those seeking to offset aviation emissions — from fuel providers to airlines to the flying public. Just the ticket Which brings us to another important piece to the sustainable aviation puzzle: passengers. It wasn’t lost on pretty much everyone I interviewed that the flying public will need to begin doing its part to help make aviation sustainable. “Our research indicates that consumers would prefer to fly on airlines that are actually investing in high-quality offsets, and that are delivering real climate and social and health benefits in local communities,” EDF’s Petsonk said. “They're willing to pay more for that air ticket if they're convinced that the airline is serious about making the investment.” Airlines for years have offered ticket buyers the ability to offset the emissions from their flight, with minimal customer uptake — single-digit percentages, by most estimates. And in an era when some airlines nickel and dime passengers for just about everything, it’s understandable that chipping in for offsets won’t likely be high on most flyers’ list — at least, not voluntarily. There’s a role here for travel aggregators — the Orbitzes and Expedias and Kayaks of the world — which can help make offsetting a flight an opt-out exercise instead of opt-in. Also, travel influencers — people with an online presence who encourage their followers to travel to particular places or on particular airlines. “The Instagrammers, the people who have large followings in the leisure travel community, they can be enormously influential as they become more aware of the need to protect the beautiful places that they're encouraging people to travel to and to protect the climate in order to save those beautiful places,” Petonk said. The Instagrammers can be enormously influential as they become more aware of the need to protect the beautiful places that they're encouraging people to travel to. Of course, there’s also a significant role for corporate travel buyers. “Companies are starting to ask airlines, ‘How are you going to help me reduce my Scope 3 travel-related carbon emissions?’,” said Angela Foster-Rice, senior vice president at Everland, which markets and sells forestry-based offsets, and who previously spent 16 years in environmental and sustainability roles at United Airlines. While at United, Foster-Rice spoke to a number of key corporate customers. “That was a few years ago, and we were already seeing demands by customers: ‘I see that you're engaging in great, long-term innovations to decarbonize, but what can you do for me today? How can I compare airlines? How can you help me have a lower footprint?’ There's a growing demand and interest — particularly by business customers, but also with general consumers — around airlines needing to reduce their footprint in order to help passengers reduce their footprint.” Technology, policy, finance If aviation offsets don’t get sufficient uptake voluntarily, perhaps they will be forced on flyers. One recent proponent of such measures is John Holland-Kaye, CEO of Heathrow Airport: Passengers should pay higher flight taxes if their plane uses traditional fuel instead of SAF, he said. Levying a passenger fee is just one of many measures that could provide favorable tailwinds for sustainable aviation initiatives. “The biggest piece that we need is policy,” Foster-Rice said. “Because the technology exists. There's a real demand by airlines to have SAF, but the costs are just too high. And in order to address that, this is still a very fledgling industry. And the only way to really get there is to have the right policies in place.” Annie Petonk agrees: “What we think is needed is a joint effort involving governments, the airlines and their largest customers to develop innovative financial instruments and government support to bridge the gap between conventional jet fuel and sustainable aviation fuel, provided that that sustainable aviation fuel meets very rigorous quality standards.” That sentiment was another through line among nearly all of the interviews I conducted. Bryan Sherbacow: “We’ve had significant interest, and we have access to capital. The issue is that to deploy that capital, investors want to have security into the future of consistent policy that’s going to support our activity and the return on their investment. Today, we don’t have that. It’s uneven with regard to what types of fuels are being incentivized. It’s also uneven as to whether they’re going to be able to rely upon that policy on a consistent basis into the future sufficient enough for investors to feel comfortable.” Even with policy incentives, an arguably tougher challenge in transitioning aviation toward carbon neutrality is lining up the various parts of the aviation ecosystem — including both the fueling and the offset value chains — within the industry’s complex web of interests. Anna Mascolo feels that Shell has a key role to play in this regard beyond merely selling sustainable aviation fuels and offsets. “I think the role that we can play is actually a really good role. It's not an easy one, and it's one where we will have to maybe step out a little bit of our comfort zone. We need to look at the whole ecosystem. We need to look at airlines. We need to look at producers. We need to look at logistics providers. We need to look at manufacturers. We need to look at airports. We need to look at government regulators. Everybody needs to play a role, because the challenge is too big to be tackled by one single company on its own.” https://www.greenbiz.com/article/can-shell-help-pilot-new-era-sustainable-aviation Aviation group Star Alliance says it’s going all-in on Amazon’s cloud Amazon Web Services Inc. rolled out another marquee customer early today, kicking off the third and final week of its virtual re:Invent event by announcing that Star Alliance is going all-in on Amazon’s cloud infrastructure. Star Alliance, which is the world’s largest aviation industry alliance with 26 airlines, said it’s moving its entire information technology infrastructure to Amazon’s cloud. The move will reduce its IT infrastructure total cost of ownership by 25%, it said, while helping it become a more agile organization with better IT performance. Star Alliance said it’s working with Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. to facilitate the move, which involves migrating all of its data, platforms and business-critical applications to Amazon’s cloud. The Alliance will then close down its on-premises data centers and be able to take advantage of Amazon services such as Amazon Elastic Container Service with Amazon Fargate, a serverless compute engine for containerized apps, to create new services designed to make travel safer and easier for passengers. One example is an existing baggage tracking application that uses the Amazon Aurora database service to process data from multiple baggage systems and create a centralized reporting system for airline customer service agents to track bags at airports across the world. Star Alliance has also created a “Star Alliance Inter Airline Through Check-in Hub” app that makes it possible for passengers to check-in and receive boarding passes for journeys with multiple stops when using more than one airline. There’s also a new Transfer Decision Tool for airlines that helps them manage “at-risk flight connections” — those that need to be facilitated quickly by getting passengers and their bags onto connecting flights in the shortest possible time. More important, Star Alliance said, the move to AWS will help it to meet the changing demands of worldwide air travel that have occurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. When travel restrictions came into effect across the globe earlier this year, Star Alliance reduced its infrastructure footprint and spending by 30% immediately just by scaling down its use of AWS. “We decided to go all-in on AWS to gain the reliability and scalability we needed to support the increasing number of global travelers joining the alliance each year, but the pandemic also proved how valuable it is to have a flexible and agile infrastructure in the cloud,” said Jeremy Drury, Star Alliance’s head of digital technology. “No one could have predicted what has happened so far in 2020, but because of our collaboration with AWS, we were able to quickly adjust our goals and scale back our expenses.” https://siliconangle.com/2020/12/14/star-alliance-says-going-amazons-cloud/ Electric airplanes are getting tantalizingly close to a commercial breakthrough For $140,000, you can fly your own electric airplane. The Slovenian company Pipistrel sells the Alpha Electro, the first electric aircraft certified as airworthy by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2018. It’s a welterweight at just 811 pounds (368 kilograms), powered by a 21 kWh battery pack—about one-fifth the power of what you’d find in a Tesla Model S. For about 90 minutes, the pilot training plane will keep you and a companion aloft without burning a drop of fossil fuel. Those of us without a pilot license will have to wait longer for emissions-free flight—but not much. For all its challenges, 2020 has proven to be a milestone year for electric aviation. Electric aircraft set new distance records, replicated short commercial flight paths, won over the US military, and attracted buyers from big airlines. And in June, European regulators granted another of Pipistrel’s aircraft, the Velis Electro, the world’s first electric “type certification,” deeming the entire aircraft design safe and ready for mass production (airworthiness only certifies individual aircraft). Much more is coming. Within two years, you’ll be able to watch Air Race E, a circuit that pits eight electric-powered airplanes against each other, zooming just 32 feet (10 meters) off the ground at 280 mph (450 kph). Electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) leaders Archer, Joby, and Beta are reading their battery-powered flights on the question for certification. “You’ve seen some shakeup in electric aviation, but also see it get closer to reality” in 2020, says John Hansman, director of MIT’s International Center for Air Transportation, and part of the hybrid-electric aircraft startup Electra. “It’s clear there will be the emergence of a new class of electric airplanes. Next year, you’ll see hybrid and battery aircraft in service or close to being in service.” The remarkable advancement in batteries, electric motors, and other hardware installed in electric cars—as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in aviation applications—have brought electric technology much closer to commercial take-off after years of doubt. By 2035, investment bank UBS estimates, the aviation industry will be 25% hybrid or fully electric. But the ascent hasn’t been without turbulence. In January, an all-electric prototype from Eviation burst into flames during ground testing at an Arizona airport, likely due to overheating batteries (the company says it will enter service by 2022). Uber sold off its aviation division, Elevate, to the startup Joby as the financial prospects for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) remain too far from profitability for Uber’s struggling balance sheet. “There’s a big difference between a demonstration airplane and an airplane you’re trying to certify,” Hansman said, referring to an FAA process that requires hundreds of millions of dollars over nearly a decade. But the new air race is on. Who will be the first to certify a commercial electric aircraft? Why go electric? Half of all global flights are shorter than 500 miles. That’s the sweet spot for electric aircraft. Fewer moving parts, less maintenance, and cheap(er) electricity means costs may fall by more than half to about $150 per hour (smaller airplanes like Pipistrel’s cost just a few dollars). For airlines, this makes entirely new routes now covered by car and train possible (and profitable) thanks to lower fuel, maintenance, and labor costs. Electric propulsion nearly solves another problem for aviation: carbon emissions. Aviation emits more than 2% (pdf) of the world’s CO2 emissions, and it may reach nearly a quarter by mid-century. With no alternative fuel ready to leave the ground, and the number of air passengers set to double by 2035, electricity may offer the industry its best way forward in a climate-constrained world. That’s likely to make 2021 the year of the hybrid. On the way to designing all-electric aircraft, electric aviation companies are modifying what works to stay aloft. This was Los Angeles-based Ampaire’s strategy with its “Electric EEL,” which pairs a combustion engine in the nose with and electric propeller motor in the rear. The modified Cessna 337 Skymaster is one of the first hybrids to win approval under the FAA’s experimental aircraft certification (only essential crew and personnel are allowed to fly). In October, the EEL completed a 341-mile test flight between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, the longest electric-hybrid flight ever for a commercial aircraft, the company claims. Ampaire is now flying 15-minute trial flights in partnership with Hawaii-based Mokulele Airlines to prove the feasibility of quick trips between the islands’ small airports with mock payloads. In 2021, the company says it will start flying in the UK, work with NASA to overhaul its aircraft designs, build out a supply chain, and lay the foundation for its own vehicle, the Tailwind, a custom-built electric jet on the drawing board (and aerodynamic test chambers). “Clean-sheet design” The ultimate prize will be designing all-new electric aircraft. But certifying a new aircraft remains arduous and expensive. “It takes a lot of time and a lot of money to build a new planet from scratch,” says Kevin Noertker, co-founder of Ampaire. “It will be five to seven years before you get a clean-sheet design. A lot of companies are trying to prove us wrong, but if they succeed, it will be a much better world.” Eviation Aircraft is one of the startups furthest down this runway. Its new electric plane, Alice, made a splash after scaled-down version completed an autonomous demonstration flight at the Paris Air Show in 2017. Since then, reports Eviation, the nine-seat, $4 million plane has received more than 150 orders. For larger aircraft, Wright Electric says it is building a fleet of 186-seat electric airliners for the British budget airline easyJet due out by 2030. Then there are the craft that need no runway at all. Air taxis, similar to overgrown drones, promise to bring the price and convenience of urban flight low enough to transform cities and same-day delivery. Archer Aviation’s eVTOL aircraft will ferry four passengers in its vehicles at speeds of up to 150 mph about 60 miles. “We’re building the world’s first all-electric airline,” says Adam Goldstein, co-founder of Archer. “You can expect us to fly in 2021.” The company is targeting urban routes at the price of an UberX, about $3 to $6 per passenger-mile. By 2024, it plans to get the public riding inside its vehicles. Archer, like rivals Joby and Beta, are all racing to secure FAA certification for their lines of aircraft. The newest kids on the block are STOL (short take-off and landing) aircraft. These combine the simplicity and cost-savings of fixed-wing aircraft with extremely short take-off distances of 100 feet or less, about one-third of a football field. A string of electric motors along the wings generate extra lift, avoiding some of the engineering complexity and certification challenges facing eVTOLs. All of them will face tough decisions to ensure the right technology makes it into the aircraft at a time when designs are rapidly evolving, says Matt Trotter of Silicon Valley Bank: “The pace of innovation in aviation right now is faster than we’ve ever seen from the entrepreneurs we speak with.” Fuel, autonomy, and form factors are all up for grabs. Batteries are cheap and easily available, but hydrogen looks increasingly attractive for flights over a few hundred miles (sourcing and storing it remains a challenge). Autonomous commercial aircraft are finally taking off, too, and pairing pilot-free planes with electric propulsion could provide huge cost savings. But the FAA won’t let pilots leave the cockpit quite yet. And exotic aircraft forms are off the drawing board as small electric motors let aerospace engineers experiment with placing one—or a dozen—on various surfaces of the airframe. All of this is forcing startups to develop aircraft that will accommodate different technologies likely to gain traction in the coming years. Jeff Engler, CEO of Wright Electric, says his company is “parallel processing” different designs as it prepares to certify an aircraft that can accommodate batteries, hybrid, or hydrogen. In all, about 200 electric aircraft were estimated to be under development in 2019, up one third from a year earlier. Investors are eagerly betting on the sector. “The biggest change we’re seeing recently is access to capital for deep tech,” says Trotter. Since 2015, 10 of the leading electric aviation startups globally have raised more than $1.2 billion, most it in the last year (led by a $590 million round by Joby Aviation), according to PitchBook. Airlines are pouring money into the supply chain for electric propulsion. The investment arms for JetBlue Airways invested $250 million in electric-aviation startups over the last three years, and Intel, Toyota Motor, Daimler, and Geely Automobile in China are crowding into the space. And the military is returning to its roots as an early funder of Silicon Valley technology: The Navy and Air Force are both providing funds, support, and testing for autonomous and electric cargo drones. Joby Aviation’s four-person eVTOL aircraft recently won an airworthiness certification from the Air Force to start flying military missions (19 other companies are in line to do the same). These companies will need all the cash they can get. Electric aviation startups, predicts one airline executive, may need $17 billion (perhaps as much as $40 billion) to certify their aircraft and build their businesses, a significant share of venture capital each year. A few companies have already made crash landings. Zunum Aero, despite raising $6.8 million from investors including Boeing and JetBlue, ran out of money in 2018 and laid off 70 staff members (it’s now fundraising again). Without massive infusions of cash and new sources of revenue before their own craft are ready to fly, more companies are likely to join Zunum. The electric aviation race will be as much against bankruptcy as rivals. https://qz.com/1943592/electric-airplanes-are-getting-close-to-a-commercial-breakthrough/ United Airlines bets on direct air capture to reduce CO2 impact United Airlines has pledged to remove 100 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The carrier, which in 2018 became the first United States-based airline to commit to reducing its greenhouse emissions by 50 per cent by 2050, will advance towards carbon neutrality by committing to a multimillion-dollar investment in revolutionary atmospheric carbon capture technology known as direct air capture. The airline said it would mean less focus on indirect measures like carbon-offsetting. In addition, United said it was continuing to invest in the development and use of sustainable aviation fuel. With the announcement, United becomes the first airline in the world to offer a commitment to invest in direct air capture technology. However, with direct air capture technology still in its infancy, the pledge could be seen as somewhat risky for United. “As the leader of one of the world’s largest airlines, I recognise our responsibility in contributing to fight climate change, as well as our responsibility to solve it,” said Scott Kirby, United chief executive officer. “These game-changing technologies will significantly reduce our emissions, and measurably reduce the speed of climate change – because buying carbon offsets alone is just not enough. “Perhaps most importantly, we’re not just doing it to meet our own sustainability goal; we’re doing it to drive the positive change our entire industry requires so that every airline can eventually join us and do the same.” Rather than simply taking a conventional approach to decarbonisation by relying solely on the purchase of carbon offsets, United intends to make a multimillion-dollar investment in 1PointFive, a partnership between Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, a subsidiary of Occidental, and Rusheen Capital Management. Their mission is to curb the rise in global temperatures by physically removing carbon dioxide from the air using direct air capture technology licensed from carbon engineering. Direct air capture technology is one of the few proven ways to physically correct for aircraft emissions, and can scale to capture millions and potentially billions of metric tons of CO2 per year. The captured CO2 will then be permanently, safely and securely stored deep underground by Occidental, a process certified by independent third parties. The commitment – the first to be announced in the aviation industry – will help 1PointFive build the first industrial-sized direct air capture plant in the United States. A single plant is expected to capture and permanently sequester one million tons of CO2 each year, the equivalent of the work of 40 million trees, but covering a land area about 3,000 times smaller. Additionally, United has invested more than $30 million in California-based sustainable fuel producer Fulcrum BioEnergy, which remains the single largest investment by any airline globally in a sustainable fuel producer. https://www.breakingtravelnews.com/news/article/united-airlines-bets-on-direct-air-capture-to-reduce-co2-impact/ Canadian Airports Council Echoes Urgent Call For Airline Support The Canadian Airports Council welcomed support for Canada’s airports and airlines in a report released on the weekend by the Industry Strategy Council titled "Restart, Recover and Reimagine Prosperity for All Canadians: An Ambitious Growth Plan for Building a Digital, Sustainable and Innovative Economy." In its report, the ISC noted that: “The catastrophic drop in air travel worldwide has created ripple effects on Canadian airports and the country’s aerospace sector. Aviation and aerospace are highly interreliant as travellers affect aviation demand, which in turn drives demand for aerospace products and services. Both are in urgent need of targeted assistance to avoid collapse, especially in Canada, where our aviation industry relies on one of the few user-pay systems in the world.The current situation is placing the entire system at risk. “Absent decisive action, Canada’s air transport system could emerge from COVID-19 in a much weaker state. Canadian air travellers could see reduced service, higher prices, diminished competition and a loss of connectivity.," the ISC report said. "Higher ticket prices and reduced connectivity would place Canadian businesses that rely on air travel at a disadvantage compared to their foreign competitors.” The report makes several recommendations for aviation and tourism, including: - Provide longer-term support (e.g., until return to pre-COVID-19 levels of activity) to allow firms that are particularly impacted or of national strategic interest to meet fixed costs and allow for greening of fleets in line with other competitive jurisdictions (complementary and/or in replacement of existing programs). - Provide targeted liquidity measures for critical aviation players, airports, and transit systems, to facilitate recovery in line with taxpayer expectations and what is done in other competitive jurisdictions. - Accelerate a restart of domestic and international travel by adopting innovative ways to manage risks and rebuild confidence (e.g., rapid testing for international visitors from low-risk jurisdictions with significantly reduced quarantine times). - Selectively reopen borders with low-risk countries (e.g., travel “bubbles” or “corridors”) and for highly critical workers (e.g., automotive workers) to accelerate recovery of air travel. - Establish adequate safety protocols and invest in supporting infrastructure to increase consumer confidence (e.g., contactless journeys, seat reservation app for transit that help manage both capacity and safety, and fast testing to increase travel). - Incentivize the adoption of intelligent systems and predictive technology to increase efficiency and reduce congestion (e.g., air traffic control systems that better manage air traffic in dense airspace, reduce aircraft noise, and reduce aircraft emissions, and modern signalling and automatic control systems to improve rail efficiency and safety). “Canada’s airports thank the Industry Strategy Council for its extensive work to understand the challenges Canada’s air sector faces today, which are entirely the result of the devastating business impact of COVID-19,” said CAC President Daniel-Robert Gooch. “The Council’s call for longer term support of the sector until there is a return to pre-COVID-19 levels of activity, and accelerated restart of domestic and international travel through innovations like rapid testing of international visitors and reduced quarantine times, are fully aligned with what airports and our partners in the sector have been saying for quite some time.” The recently announced Fall Economic Statement was a good first step for Canada’s airports but more support will be needed. The statement provided funds for airport infrastructure and included deferrals and waivers for airport ground rent at 22 airports. However, rent measures were primarily for just one year in which rent would continue to be suppressed by low revenues. Rent will have to be repaid starting in 2024 at the four airports that pay 85 per cent of ground rent. There was also no new information in the update on federal plans for rapid testing at airports or a restart to international travel, the CAC noted. “Canada’s airports and industry partners need extended support for a protracted recovery, and a plan soon to restart air travel if our sector is to be prepared for Canadians when they are ready to travel again in greater volumes, and to meet the pent-up demand for travel we anticipate will start to return next summer,” said Gooch. “It is great to see the government’s Industry Strategy Council agrees with us on the need for longer term support and innovations like rapid testing.” https://ca.travelpulse.com/news/airlines/canadian-airports-council-echoes-urgent-call-for-airline-support.html Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Approved for Use On U.S. Pilots and Air Traffic Controllers The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved the Pfizer / BionTech COVID-19 vaccine for use on pilots and air traffic controllers following concerns pilots would be medically disqualified from working if they received the jab. The ruling, which was announced on Saturday, came just 24-hours after the Federal Drug Administration issued an emergency use approval for the vaccine that uses “novel” mRNA technology. But while the FAA said pilots and air traffic controllers were now cleared to have the vaccine, there would have to be a 48-hour no work buffer after the jab was administered. Last Tuesday, the United Kingdom became the first country in the world to start administering the vaccine to high-risk groups outside of clinical trials. But just two days later, the country’s healthcare regulator warned people with a “history of significant allergic reactions” not to take the Pfizer vaccine when two healthcare workers suffered anaphylactoid reactions a short time after receiving the jab. The FAA’s Office of Aerospace Medicine said it “would monitor the patient response to Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and may adjust this policy as necessary to ensure aviation safety.” Additional vaccines will only be evaluated for use on pilots and air traffic controllers once they have been cleared by the FDA. Earlier this week, a group of aviation trade body’s and unions wrote to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a bid to give airline workers priority access to COVID-19 vaccines once they become available. The CDC has so far said healthcare workers and residents of elderly care homes should be the first to get vaccinated but is still to draw up plans for the wider roll-out. Pilots groups suggested rising infection levels amongst airline workers would delay the distribution of vaccines across the United States and around the world, arguing priority vaccination would alleviate delays potential distribution delays. The signatories of the letter include trade body Airlines 4 America which represents major U.S. carriers like American, Delta and United Airlines, as well as Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines. The ALPA pilots union also joined the calls for airline workers to get priority access. Last week, Delta chief executive Ed Bastian said his employees would be strongly encouraged to get vaccinated as soon as they were offered the jab and hoped airline workers would be prioritized. Bastian also suggested mandatory vaccination might be required to work or travel as a passenger on long-haul international flights. Australian flag carrier Qantas is so far the only airline to have publicly announced a ‘no jab, no fly’ policy once it restarts regularly scheduled international flights in the second half of 2021. Chief executive Alan Joyce said he respected the personal decisions of people not to get vaccinated but said they had no right to fly with Qantas and would not be welcomed onboard its planes. https://www.paddleyourownkanoo.com/2020/12/13/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-approved-for-use-on-u-s-pilots-and-air-traffic-controllers/ Nordic nations set the pace in push for electric planes The Nordic region’s pace-setting push into green transport is set to extend from cars to the air-travel market. Iceland this month signaled plans to move toward carbon-free domestic flights by the end of the decade, while Sweden’s Heart Aerospace aims to deliver an electric plane specifically designed to ply routes linking remote Scandinavian settlements within six years. Coordinating the region’s initiatives is the Nordic Network for Electric Aviation, founded last year and tying together airport authorities and five airlines including Finnair, Icelandair and SAS, alongside Heart and other technology innovators. The emphasis on cleaner flights follows Norway’s strides toward banishing the combustion engine, with more than half the cars sold there now electric. “We have an opportunity here to show the world what’s possible, and also to give the industries in our countries the opportunity to be front-runners and build this market,” said Maria Fiskerud, the NEA’s project manager and former adviser to the Swedish government on aviation biofuels. The group has received 12 million kronor (US$1.4 million) in combined funding from its members and the governments of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland and Greenland. Thin routes Iceland’s plan to embrace electric planes is being led by its parliament’s environment and transport committee, which has asked the government to establish a group of experts to lay the groundwork for environmentally friendly domestic services by 2030. While Norway’s success in encouraging electric autos has been driven by generous tax incentives and concern about the economy’s reliance on oil production, the region’s focus on greener aviation is more directly rooted in the unique nature of a market characterized by flights between sparsely populated areas with limited surface transport links. Iceland’s compact size makes it particularly well-suited to first-generation electric aircraft, which will be limited in passenger capacity by the weight of batteries needed to get even a small number of people off the ground. Fiskerud said Icelandic domestic trips offer the perfect testbed, since “routes are all within an hour’s reach.” The greater size of Sweden, for example, might be too much of a stretch for early models so that a pledge to render its domestic market fossil-free by 2030 is likely to require a mix of electric planes, sustainable jet fuel and possibly hybrid technology, she said. Icelandair Chief Commercial Officer Jens Thordarson said he’s enthusiastic about the application of electric technology, especially in light of the island’s abundant geothermal and hydro-power green-energy resources. The carrier’s domestic arm Air Iceland Connect currently uses three 37-seat Q200 turboprops and two 70 seat Q400s from Bombardier, now De Havilland Canada. “We’re still a long way away from being able to have electric long-distance flights,” he said in an interview. “However many projects are underway for developing aircraft for shorter distances. Being able to utilize electric planes for domestic flights would change the business.” Thordarson said a plane carrying about 20 people using locally sourced electricity could even be cheaper to operate than kerosene-powered models, opening up the prospect of increased frequencies with fewer passengers than existing services in order to keep down takeoff weights. Heart's 19-seat e-plane Heart, based in Gothenburg, plans to win certification for its ES-19 regional plane by 2026, according to the company’s website. The model, named for its 19-seat capacity, will have a range of about 400km and feature a conventional wing and propellers. It will be able to operate from a runway as short as 800 meters. Thordarson said it may take two or three years beyond certification to establish the reliability of electric planes for commercial services and for them to enter mass production. Airport infrastructure will also need to be adapted to provide adequate access to charging, and the reduced performance of batteries in cold climates must also be addressed, he said. Government support may be required, paralleling that provided for eco-friendly vehicles. Norway, which aims to turn domestic flights all-electric by 2040, is looking at making subsidies for individual routes conditional on switching away from fossil fuels, or offering tax incentives for electric services. The Nordic region’s combination of ready access to renewable electricity, high relative wealth and geography favoring smaller planes will provide a litmus test for the viability of carbon-free flying more generally, Fiskerud said. “This is a good part of the world to start working with electric aviation,” she said. “If we can‘t do this here then it is difficult to see where it can be done.” https://www.executivetraveller.com/news/nordic-nations-set-the-pace-in-push-for-electric-planes Making flying safe: The evolution of DAA in unmanned drones These are exciting times in the UAS space. Momentum is growing, civil aviation bodies are getting more comfortable with the necessary regulation required across the industry and of course the commercial opportunities are expanding. These include infrastructure inspection, mining, mapping, agriculture, emergency response, and package delivery. But work still remains to ensure we remove the risk of mid-air collisions. Closely related to that is how do we scale commercial drone operations by reducing the dependence on dedicated pilots, sometimes over one per drone? Fixing these two obstacles are the next major breakthroughs to unlocking the commercial drone space. In the mainstream world of aviation, there are multiple checks to prevent mid-air collisions and an increase in automated tasks – and auto-pilot. We employ a system of systems and multiple layers of mitigation to avoid mid-air collisions, from the flight plan – the altitudes chosen, the route plotted, the airspace transited all contribute to avoiding other traffic and terrestrial and environmental hazards – to a variety of tactical methods to avoid other aircraft, including talking to air traffic control, using ADS-B, ground-based radars, and transponder equipped aircraft. Finally, we come to the last line of defense — the human pilot. It’s essentially a ‘stack’ of mitigation layers to filter out the collision risk. But no system is perfect, which is why FAR part 91.113(b) states “The pilot….shall see and avoid other aircraft.” So when there is no ‘pilot’ on board we have effectively lost our last line of defense. The good news is that we have the ability through regulation, technology, and collaboration with each other to have all drones be considered ‘cooperative,’ reporting where they are and what their intentions are so that other airspace users are aware of where the drone is operating and what it plans to do. Auto-pilot for drones Systems like UTM (Unmanned Traffic Management) offer great promise to help the low altitude drone community avoid mid-air collisions due to the ‘cooperative’ nature of the drones. Our main challenge comes from the desire to push flight plans outside the boundaries of the current regulations, such as Part 107 in the US. This allows for commercial drone operations below 400 feet above the ground, within visual line of sight, and a host of other restrictions. But with use cases like long-linear infrastructure inspections, large area mapping, search and rescue, logistics, and passenger transit you begin to understand why they must fly ‘beyond the visual line of sight’ (BVLOS). Though talking of BVLOS, I’m not a fan of the acronym as it implies the desire is always to fly farther than someone can see. The bigger economic value is that solving the BVLOS problem inverts the critical operator-to-aircraft ratio. For drones, right now that is one (or more) to one. In many cases, operating a single drone requires more than one human operator. We will see the rapid adoption of drone technology not because they can fly far, but because one person can fly multiple drones. This is where the economic value lies with robotic aircraft. So where are we today? To date, we have not had an equivalent system to the pilot on drones that can provide the same ‘last line of defense.’ This is where Iris Automation is focusing our energy. We developed a system called Casia that uses a combination of computer vision, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to detect, classify, and compute the relative position of an aircraft in flight. We’ve been collaborating with partners and regulators to explore how our system can be used in conjunction with other technologies and concepts of operations to mitigate the mid-air collision risk as well, if not better than we do today in piloted aircraft. The exciting part of our approach is that by using computer vision, we are able to use relatively low-cost, readily available, and small off-the-shelf hardware components. This helps keep our size, weight and power (SWAP) low enough to be placed on-board the aircraft without negatively impacting that aircraft’s ability to perform its mission and carry its revenue-generating payloads. Improvements in performance in the future will be provided through software updates, including constantly improving our machine learning database, allowing for use in more diverse environments and detecting and classifying an ever-increasing number of aircraft and other obstacles. We’ve already achieved waiver approvals in Alaska, Kansas, South Africa, and Canada for BVLOS flight trials, which are an important stepping stone and ones that led us into the FAA’s BEYOND program to advance more complex UAS operations in the National Airspace System. This year we hit some major milestones around regulatory testing. Transport Canada issued the second Special Flight Operations Certificate (SFOC) for BVLOS flights in uncontrolled airspace utilizing infrastructure masking and Iris Automation’s onboard detect-and-avoid (DAA) solution to MVT Geo-solutions. Under this SFOC we will partner to conduct commercial missions over linear power lines in Alma, Quebec. These flights will mark the partnership’s first BVLOS flights outside of the CED Alma test range that leverage onboard DAA for air risk mitigation and does not require ground-based visual observers or radar. In May 2018, the City of Reno in Nevada was selected by the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) as one of nine state, local and tribal governments to participate in the FAA UAS IPP. The UAS IPP is working with the nine public-private partnerships to implement and study specific drone applications across the United States in an effort to advance the safe integration of drones into the nation’s airspace. We partnered with the City’s Fire Department to test equipping it with drones to conduct life-saving river search and rescue operations. The River Search and Rescue program will test the safety and capability of using drones during river rescue missions in an effort to improve response times and reduce exposure of both first responders and victims to dangerous conditions during river rescue operations. Are we as good as humans yet? Not quite, but we are getting there fast. Plus an automated system doesn’t get distracted, tired or bored doing its job. It can see all the airspace around it and is not occluded by cockpit structure, passengers, or cargo. This makes it a critical part of the system of systems that includes UTM, radar, ADS-B, and other strategic mitigations. Analogous to the human pilot, we are in a great position to provide the ‘last line of defense’ for collision avoidance to the commercial drone community. We see a time when an onboard DAA system like Casia will be the key to transitioning aviation regulation to accept full integration of unmanned systems with piloted aircraft. It sounds simple, but the goal is to make flying safe. https://www.commercialdroneprofessional.com/in-depth-automation-in-unmanned-drones-and-making-flying-safe/ France to oblige airlines to use green but expensive biofuel Airlines will be required to use 1% of bio-jet fuel from 2022. It is 80% less polluting than normal fuels, but could lead to more expensive flight tickets France’s parliament is in the process of adopting legislation through its draft 2021 budget that will require any airliner refuelling in the country to use at least 1% renewable bio-jet fuel. Bio-jet fuels are made from waste or vegetable or animal oils and they emit up to 80% less CO2 than fossil-based kerosene, which is currently used by airliners. France plans to increase this obligation to 2% of all aviation fuel by 2025, 5% by 2030 and 50% by 2050. Globally, only around 0.6% of the jet fuel used to power aircraft is sustainable biofuel, aviation news network Runway Girl states. This is due to the fact that renewable bio-jet fuels are three to six-times more expensive than fossil fuels, depending on the technology. A ticket on a plane travelling from Paris to New York using 1% bio-jet fuel will cost each passenger around €4 more. Other European nations are not required to undertake the same action. "These measures should be developed at least at European level and ideally at international level," François Ioos, vice-president of biofuels at Total France, told Le Figaro. Norway and Sweden have also set targets to increase airliners’ use of bio-jet fuels. https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/France-to-oblige-airlines-to-use-green-but-expensive-biofuel Indonesia courts SpaceX as new rocket launch site Indonesia has put itself forward as a possible rocket launch site for Elon Musk's SpaceX venture. The south-east Asian country is already in talks with Mr Musk's Tesla about a possible electric battery partnership. According to Indonesia's Coordinating Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs, President Joko Widodo has been in discussions with Mr Musk. The Tesla billionaire is sending a team to Indonesia in January to look at potential investments, it added. One option to be discussed is building a plant in Central Java. Indonesia is home to large deposits of copper, nickel and tin, and aims to become the world's biggest producer of electric vehicle batteries. "Nickel is the biggest challenge for high-volume, long-range batteries! Australia and Canada are doing pretty well. US nickel production is objectively very lame. Indonesia is great!" Mr Musk tweeted earlier this year. But apart from an investment partnership with Tesla, Mr Widodo also asked Mr Musk to look into the possibility of setting up a space launch station in Indonesia. "President Joko Widodo invites [Musk] to look into Indonesia as a launching pad for SpaceX," the ministry said. Indonesia's National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) has plans to construct its first spaceport. It will be located in Biak, on the island of Papua. Its large-scale aerospace development needs international investors and SpaceX is one of the possible partners it has approached. Tesla already has manufacturing presence in the region through its Shanghai gigafactory. The Chinese plant now makes around 250,000 cars a year. Mr Musk said it will soon start exporting its Model 3 cars built in the Shanghai factory to Europe. The US entrepreneur also launched the latest prototype of his Starship vehicle from Texas last week. Codenamed SN8, the 50m-tall vehicle crashed on touchdown but Mr Musk was delighted with how much the test outing achieved. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/indonesia-courts-spacex-rocket-launch-025441673.html Curt Lewis