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Airline transportation after the epidemic. The problem is being solved, but not the way you would have imagined

May 5, 2020

Airline transportation after the epidemic. The problem is being solved, but not the way you would have imagined

That’s how a hydrogen-powered plane could look like. Honestly, it is not very impressive: it looks more like an Elvis sighting and one may even reasonably doubt that this thing could fly. If it were easy to power planes using hydrogen, someone would be working at real prototypes rather than just these drawings. 

Airlines have been on the edge of collapse for many years and for many good reasons, but the real problem, at the basis of all the others, is the need for fossil fuels. Airplanes are voracious beasts: they consume around 7% of the world’s production of fuels and fueling planes represents about 20%-30% of the costs of operating an airline. So far, most companies have survived the vagaries of the oil market, but it should be obvious that crude oil cannot last forever. In addition, there is the problem of the pollution generated by fossil fuels, especially in terms of contributing to global warming. One result is the phenomenon called “flight shame,” another headache for airline managers.

So, if you want to keep planes in the air, you need to get rid of the need for fossil fuels. And that turns out to be nearly impossible, at least for the current generation of planes. I already discussed the technical and financial aspects of alternatives to fossil fuels. Hydrogen is a good fuel for rockets, but not for civilian planes, it is a technological and financial nightmare, Biofuels can’t help: there is no way that you can step production to levels sufficient to feed the current fleet of civilian planes. Electric planes are a nice idea for small planes, but there is no way that you can build an electric equivalent of a Boeing 747.

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