Things we talk about in this episode Ian Brooke’s background and story as an entrepreneur from an early age What is Astro Mechanica and how it got started What is an electric adaptive jet engine and how does it work What are the potential applications of the electric adaptive jet engine Astro Mechanica’s acceptance into Y Combinator, the famous Sil…

Vertical Aerospace is one of the world’s leading advanced air mobility developers, at least when it comes to its order book. Some 1,500 units of its VX4 eVTOL aircraft have already been pre-ordered (including a 500 aircraft order from Avolon, which the lessor then managed to place in a matter of months with a handful of airlines), but before that, …

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The decarbonization of the aviation industry will require huge amounts of investment. If we focus on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) alone, the amount of capex that will be required is staggering. Take Europe, for example, that will need over 100 new SAF production plants by 2030 if the aviation industry is to meet the EU’s ambitious SAF adoption p…

Right as the commercial aviation industry gears up for the 2024 edition of the Farnborough Air Show, I got on Zoom with Jon Sindreu, one of the top journalists out there that knows the industry best. Perhaps because, in addition to his strong focus on aviation, Jon covers also range of sectors through the popular “Heard on the Streat” section on th…

As Europe is trying to get people off planes and into trains out of environmental concerns, Dr. Klaus Radermacher stands out as a contrarian voice. We are calculating it wrong!…says this engineer and consultant, who, in the last few years has taken a keen interest in the topic of sustainable mobility. Is the train really a better alternative to the…

Sustainability has become a central topic in aviation, but are airlines prepared for this conversation? Elizabeth Maclean and Mike Evans are the co-founders of Herdwick Communications, a consultancy firm that advises airlines all over the world. With Elizabeth and Mike we speak about the reputation crisis and public relations storm that the aviatio…

Landor is, possibly, the creative agency that has designed the most iconic brands in aviation. British Airways, Alitalia, Singapore Airlines and Etihad are just a few of the big names of the airline industry that have entrusted their public identity to Landor’s creative minds. On this episode of the podcast we speak with Ryan Frost, Executive Creat…

Our guest in this episode is Billy Thalheimer, founder and CEO of REGENT, a startup based in Rhode Island developing a wing-in-ground vehicle that will make it possible to fly fast and sustainably between coastal cities before the end of this decade. A wing-in-ground vehicle (WiG) is a type of craft that flies just a few meters above the surface of…

Is the air cargo market ripe for its own technology revolution? Aleksey Matyushev and his team at Natilus are certainly doing their bit to make it happen. A graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Aleksey has been working at the cutting edge of aerospace technology for quite some time, both on civilian and military projects. He is the fou…

Charles Everett is the Director of Aviation at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a public organization set up by these two states in order to manage key pieces of infrastructure, including the ports, some tunnels and roads and, importantly for this episode of the podcast, New York’s airport system. More than 144 million passengers pass…

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Giulio Ranucci is the Head of Innovation at Aeroporti di Roma (AdR), the company managing Rome’s two airports, Fiumicino (FCO) and Ciampino (CIA), with nearly 45 million annual passengers combined. What makes Giulio’s work at the helm of AdR’s innovation arm particularly interesting, is the very active role that the Italian airport operator is play…

Richard Gaona is one of the key players in the global executive aviation industry. The once president of Airbus’ Executive Aircraft division is currently leading one of the most unique operators in the highly sophisticated world of private aviation. Richard is the President and CEO of Comlux, a company like no other. The uniqueness of Comlux is not…

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Jay Sorensen is one of the world’s top experts in airline ancillaries. Every year, Jay’s firm, IdeaWorksCompany, produces a comprehensive report about the state of airline ancillaries, a piece of work that has become the reference in this field, the Yearbook of Ancillary Revenue. As someone that tried to read IdeaWork’s ancillaries yearbook as soon…

Addison Ferrell is Director, Infrastructure and Head of Americas at Skyports, one of the world’s leading vertiport developers. Vertiports will be an essential element of the upcoming advanced air mobility revolution. Will they be more like airports or like metro stations? What sort of experience can we expect to have there are travellers? What are …

The seaplane industry could not remain off trend. Electrification is driving a wave of innovation in aviation and George Alafinov, the scion of a family of seaplane designers, is making sure it does not skip one of the oldest branches of the industry. True, seaplanes may have fallen out of fashion in the post-war years. The advent of the jet era, t…

Marc Piette is the founder and CEO of Xwing, a California-based company that is developing a system that allows aircraft to fly fully autonomously, from gate to gate without human intervention. This may sounds like science-fiction to some, but it is certainly not. Already back in 2021, Xwing demonstrated this technology by successfully completing o…

Things we talk about in this episode: Jenny’s professional background What is Cranfield Aerospace Solutions What is the relationship between Cranfield Aerospace Solutions and Cranfield University Why Cranfield Aerospace Solutions has pivoted towards the search for sustainable technologies in aviation The Britten-Norman deal Project Fresson The role…

As used as I am in reviewing all sorts of innovative ideas in aviation, the concept that Magpie Aviation presented a few weeks ago really caught my eye. Is this even possible? This was my first reaction when learning about the system to get an electric aircraft to tow, mid-air, a passenger aircraft to its destination that the guys at Magpie have de…

This year’s edition of EBACE was all about sustainability, or at least that’s what the program of activities focused on. The executive aviation industry is well aware of how it is being increasingly perceived by the public opinion in a context of climate alarm and, believe it or not, it is taking the matter very seriously. Interestingly, and perhap…

TNMT is the research and analysis arm of Lufthansa Innovation Hub, which is, in turn, the innovation arm of the large German airline group. If you are into aviation tech, TNMT’s newsletter is a must. I have been a subscriber for quite some time and have even collaborated, through AeroTime, in one of its editions. This is why I had long wanted to in…

Mikhail Kokorich is a serial entrepreneur operating at the technology frontier of aerospace. Following a string of successful business launches in areas such as satellite technology, his latest venture, Swiss-based Destinus is developing an hypersonic aircraft capable of linking different continents at speeds five times faster than sound. This may …

When it comes to the passenger experience and the product most airlines offer to their passengers, Jeff O’Neill has pretty strong opinions. Not for nothing, Jeff, who was already on this podcast back in 2020, is the founder of Zephyr Aircraft Seat and has been patiently working to bring to fruition what he sees as the future of the Premium Economy …

Omer Bar-Yohay is the president of AutoFlight. AutoFlight is as close as it gets in the eVTOL world to a global company: founded and headquartered in China, where it has its manufacturing facility, its design and development team and some of its major investors are located in Germany and its operational testing grounds in the California. Although, …

Hemant Mistry, our guest today, is the director of energy transition at the world’s top airline industry organisation, IATA, which gathers nearly 300 airlines from all over the world. With Hemant we review the strategy of priorities that IATA has set for its members and the industry’s position in matters such as the sustainable fuel mandates being …

Ivor von Dartel left the comfort and security of a corporate job at Airbus to develop an all-electric battery-powered aircraft. Munich-based Vaeridion is one of the most promising players in the emerging field of electric aviation. The 9-seater, 500km-range electric aircraft that Ivor’s team is working on is designed to shuttle travellers, carbon-f…

Gregory Davis heads one of the most talked-about startups of the electric aviation era. In fact, Eviation was already cool when almost no one was talking about electric aircraft and aviation sustainability. The super sleek lines of its Alice commuter aircraft are due to the fact that this truly clean-sheet aircraft has been designed around the batt…

This is not the first time that Morell Westermann visits this podcast. Those of you that were around in 2020, when we were just taking off, might remember how Morell Westermann and Malik Aziz explained here their record-setting electric flight across the whole length of Germany. Well, Morell is back at record setting, this time, at aeroFriedrichsha…

If you are into sustainable aviation, chances are that you have come across ZeroAvia some way or another. This fast growing startup, which is developing hydrogen fuel-cell powertrains for aircraft, has been making headlines pretty much every other week. From its Californian roots, ZeroAvia is now operating across five separate locations in the US a…

JetBlue Ventures is one of the earliest and most prolific early stage investors in the aviation and travel technology space. It is now common for many large airlines to have their own in-house venture arm, but when it launched, back in 2016, JetBlue Ventures was one of the pioneers in this space, together with Hangar51 (of the IAG Group) and Cockpi…

Patrick Edmond is the managing director of Altair Advisory, a consultancy firm providing expertise and advice to the commercial aviation industry. Patrick has a long and broad experience that encompasses airlines, airports, aircraft leasing, aviation tech and, of course, consulting services, which gives him a great vantage point on the industry. I …

LanzaJet is the sustainable aviation fuel spin-off of the almost eponymous LanzaTech, an American firm that is developing and deploying technologies to turn different sorts of feedstock and waste, into biofuels. Of the different processes and pathways available to make sustainable aviation fuel, LanzaJet is focusing on the Alcohol-to-Jet one, which…

Michael Barnard is one of the most outspoken experts in the field of renewable energy and decarbonization technologies and, as it couldn’t be otherwise, has also had a close look at the different projects that are claiming to take aviation towards the path of sustainability. In this long and gripping conversation, Michael doesn’t mince words when t…

Today’s podcast guest is leading a firm that is truly unique in the aviation world. Tom Grundy, CEO of Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) will possibly chastise me for talking about the airship comeback. The Airlander, the world’s largest aircraft by some measures, may look, from the outside, like one of those classical airships of the pre-War era, however,…

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We are living through an almost unprecedented wave of aerospace innovation. From eVTOLs to new propulsion technologies, the world is awash with new projects, designs and concepts. How many of them will pass the certification process? This is a question that I’ve been pondering for a while and this is the reason I welcomed the chance to do this epis…

Alon’s career spans several decades in, both, military and civilian aviation. He’s been at the helm of all sorts of aircraft, from F-16s to the Dreamliners, which he currently flies for Israeli airline El Al. But, while Alon’s flying career could surely provide material for several episodes, the reason he’s here today on the podcast is the Simplifl…

The recent covid pandemic has exposed how fragile the aviation and, more generally, the travel sector are to external shocks. What’s more, things get particularly messy when each country starts implementing its own measures and health requirements. The confusion and uncertainty resulting from this maze of regulations is often more damaging than the…

When British airline Flybe folded during the covid pandemic, Josef Mouris had the chance to devote 100% of his energies to the project that had been long time in his mind. This former Dash Q400 pilot founded Electron, an electric flight startup. Although at first Josef was looking at the actual flying-operational part of the business, he soon reali…

Addison Schonland is the co-founder and manager of AirInsight, a digital platform that tracks the commercial aviation industry through a combination of media content and analytical tools. Addison is one of the most knowledgeable people I know about the state of the aviation industry and he was also one of the very first guests of this podcast when …

Felipe Varon started thinking about drones more than 20 years ago when it was far from being a fashionable topic. A lot has changed since then and nowadays there is no shortage of startups working in the field of advanced air mobility (AAM). While there is no shortage of startups designing new cool eVTOL aircraft, Varon, the firm that Felipe leads,…

In addition to being a long-time aviation executive and entrepreneur, Paul Perera is, perhaps, one of the most prolific experts out there when it comes to disseminating interesting insights and relevant stories in the domain of aviation sustainability. Paul is active in the field of hydrogen aviation through, Fluxart, a UK-based startup he co-found…

In the fourth and last episode of this airlines and software cycle, produced in collaboration with SITA for Aircraft, we present you a comprehensive, holistic view of how digital, data-driven tools have become increasingly important to get further efficiency improvements out of airline operations. Sometimes it’s a relatively small thing, such as no…

Simon I. Briceno is the chief commercial officer at Jaunt Air Mobility, an interesting advanced air mobility startup with a rather unique approach: a hybrid eVTOL with fixed wing and a rotorcraft. Why this unusual configuration? Simon shares some details about the advantages of this approach and how Jaunt’s engineers aim to get the best of both wor…

Keith Mason heads the Centre for Air Transport Management at Cranfield University, in the UK, one of the world’s top, if not THE top, education centers for aviation studies. Professionals from all over the world head to this educational establishment in the middle of England to learn, research and breathe aviation. Cranfield University offers gradu…

Australian startup Avation H2 is working on an ammonia-powered aircraft. On this episode of the podcast, its co-founder and director, Helmut Mayer, joins us to share the details of this project and discuss the prospects of ammonia as a potential aviation fuel of the future!Door Allplane