“We’re back!” declared EBAA secretary-general Athar Husain Khan in the rousing EBACE 2022 keynote opening session yesterday, referencing the show's three-year hiatus due to the pandemic. The session featured two inspiring aviators: Zara Rutherford, aged 19, the youngest woman to complete a solo circumnavigation of the Earth; and Martina Navratilova, who pursued a pilot’s license with the same passion and determination that propelled her to win a total of 59 Grand Slam tennis titles.
Khan, in welcoming remarks, highlighted business aviation’s advances made since the last Geneva gathering in 2019, citing new technologies, the sector’s enhanced stature, a new generation entering the workforce, and a growing commitment to sustainability. He also acknowledged “the horrific war in Ukraine,” while emphasizing that “business aviation is an industry of peace, an industry of bridging people, religions, and cultures around the world.”
Underscoring the rebound seen at all levels of the industry, André Schneider, CEO of Geneva Airport, explained that the facility, virtually empty for three months when the pandemic began, is now hosting more business aviation flights than it was pre-Covid.
World-rounder Rutherford recounted her journey and Navratilova joined NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen for a Q&A, touching on her decision to defect from Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, her record-setting career, coming out, surviving breast cancer, and becoming a pilot.
Honeywell Aerospace and automotive group Denso are to provide the electric motors for Lilium’s seven-passenger eVTOL aircraft. The motors will power the all-electric vehicle's 30 ducted fan engines that are installed in the Lilium Jet’s wing and canard.
Announcing the new partnership at the EBACE show yesterday, Lilium reported it has been working on the motor with the companies for the past two years. It said the air-cooled design provides more structural simplicity and ease of maintenance versus liquid-cooled.
The piloted Lilium Jet, which will have a range of 155 miles and fly at speeds up to 175 mph, is intended to provide regional services connecting cities. Lilium believes the design could be scaled up to accommodate between 10 and 15 seats.
Each 100-kW motor, weighing just over 4 kg (8.8 pounds), incorporates a rotor and stator in a centrifugal or “radial" configuration that differs from traditional axial designs. According to Lilium, this approach lowers the component’s weight, manufacturing costs, and susceptibility to foreign object damage.
Honeywell is already developing the Lilium Jet’s avionics and flight control systems and invested in the company last year. Denso is expected to provide expertise in high-volume production rates, based on its background in manufacturing engines for cars.
Lilium recently resumed flight testing of a sub-scale technology demonstrator and plans for type certification in 2025.
Along with marking the global public debut of the Falcon 6X this week at EBACE 2022, Dassault Aviation is displaying a full-size cabin mockup of its Falcon 10X for the first time in Europe as the company’s largest business jet to date moves into the production phase. “We are making excellent progress in getting this new aircraft into production, and the coming months will see an increasing flow of parts, subsystems, and large structures into our facilities,” said Dassault chairman and CEO Eric Trappier.
The 10X mockup on display this week in Geneva has a cabin configuration that differs from the one shown in October at NBAA-BACE—which is remaining in the U.S.—and emphasizes the highly modular design and flexible arrangements of the interior. Dassault unveiled the 10X, its largest and longest-range aircraft yet, in May 2021. Intended range is 7,500 nm at Mach 0.85 with an Mmo of Mach 0.925.
In addition to its globe-girdling capability, the cabin is larger, wider, and taller than any currently available traditional business jet. The 10X’s cabin will boast an interior width of nine feet one inch and a height of six feet eight inches.
The first Falcon 10X is due to enter final assembly early next year. First flight is expected around a year later, with entry into service slated for late 2025, shortly after certification.
“You can have a vision, but if you don’t act now, you stay a dreamer.” With that comment, EBAA chairman Juergen Wiese summed up business aviation’s sustainability aspirations thus far. Kicking off EBACE’s Sustainability Luncheon yesterday, Wiese who is also head of BMW’s flight department, described the latest industry goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. “It was a great vision,” Wiese told the audience, “but how do we get to it?”
Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is expected to play a major role in achieving those goals. But SAF is still a nascent industry supplying less than 1 percent of aviation’s needs. “SAF is the big element that we have to jump on which we have to scale up production and uptake,” Wiese said. “It has to become cheaper and more available.”
One of the ways being considered to spur innovation is to define and establish some sort of prize. During the luncheon, Charles Lindbergh’s grandson Erik Lindbergh announced via video the launch of the Forever Flight Alliance to offer such an incentive. Under the Forever Flight Alliance, the Lindbergh Foundation and the XPrize Foundation—with the support of The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, NBAA, and others—will explore ways to accelerate the decarbonization of aviation using prizes.
Gogo Business Aviation is launching business aviation’s first global broadband satcom service to use an electronically steerable antenna on a low earth orbit (LEO) satellite network. The antenna assembly, designed in conjunction with Hughes Network systems, will be housed in an assembly small enough for any business aircraft from a turboprop and up, the U.S. company announced at EBACE. The global broadband network will operate on OneWeb’s LEO satellite network and will require just one Gogo Avance LRU, utilizing its multi-bearer capability, for connectivity.
Performance will be comparable with terrestrial broadband, according to Gogo, with a latency of less than 100 ms—up to 10 times the speed of geostationary earth orbit (GEO) satellite networks. Additional architectural benefits over traditional GEO networks include: a single unit including the antenna, power supply, RF conversion, and modem; no reliance on aircraft position data; 28 VCD in, Ethernet out; and an integrated router.
The system has been designed to simplify installation, thereby reducing costs, and will enable users to perform a multitude of data-heavy online activities including multiple simultaneous live video conferences, access to cloud solutions such as Office365, and streaming television.
Concurrently, OneWeb is planning to create a host of inflight connectivity applications. Service will be available shortly after the OneWeb satellite network is completed, which is expected this year.
The digital flip-through issues of AIN’s award-winning EBACE Convention News are now available online. It’s a great way to quickly scan the news from EBACE 2022, whether you’re in Geneva attending the show or watching from afar.
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