Aero Exhibition

Last week I visited the Aero exhibition in Friedrichshaven, Germany. My intention was to talk to startups in the electrification of flying. Personally I try not to fly anymore because of the pollution. Nowadays I prefer travelling by train. But I realise that for long distance travel for holidays or business we need to find a solution. Electrification is maybe a way out. We basically speak about battery support or Hydrogen. I talked intensively to Pipistrel, Cormorant, and Electron.?

Pipistrel Slovenia was the first certified electric airplane in the world. A great achievement. Being first is never easy. At this moment, the company is growing fast and they have challenges to keep up with demand with constrained resources. So we discussed of course how Epicflow can help them.

The second one was Cormorant Seaplanes, The Netherlands. A revolutionair design. I spoke intensively to the management of this start-up. They told me they hope that their prototype will be visible in the next year at this Aero exhibition. The plain is specifically designed for areas that have no landing strips. Just think about islands

The third one was Electron Netherlands. A beautiful design but still at an early stage. They also hope to show their aircraft in Friedrichshaven next year.

I had a great meeting with the head of design. It figured out that we were old colleagues at Fokker Aircraft in the nineties. We had a lot of mutual connections. I also had a chance to speak to a lot of his team members.?

I also had a chance to talk to a student team from TU Delft who are working on a hydrogen plane.

Currently there are around 400 initiatives worldwide in Electric flying (batteries of hydrogen). A lot of these initiatives are in the Netherlands. This country has a great eco-system in aviation. But 400 initiatives is a big figure, and everybody is looking for investors. The current situation for investment is not optimal. I asked some visitors what they thought about this initiatives. In general, they think that around 95-98% will fail.?

The following Dutch initiatives I know about were not at the exhibition. But I still want to mention them.

Maeve, an initiative that started with a full electric airplane for 44 seats with 8 motors. But they changed to 80 seats and hybrid.

Fokker Next Gen, a development of a hydrogen plain. The proto will be build on a Fokker 100. An airplane I worked on in the past.

Elysian Aircraft, a 90 seater electric airplane. The capabilities of the E9X are backed by two scientific studies “A New Perspective on Battery-Electric Aviation I & II”, in collaboration with Delft University of Technology:

This trip was successful because we are convinced that the Epicflow multi project resource management solution will be more and more involved in electric flying in the future.