Coming soon to an airport near you? United Airlines has a contract to purchase Heart Aerospace's 30-passenger ES-30 electric aircraft.Sound farfetched? Maybe. But also maybe not far off.“I think it’s critical for us to look into the future, understand the trends and technology and use that to inform the design,” said Baiju Shah, president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Partnership. “When you’re designing a new airport, you’re hopefully designing it for the next 50 years.
Cleveland Hopkins is in the early stages of planning for a major rebuild of its aging terminal, a $2 billion project that is expected to get underway in 2025 and will likely take 10 or more years to complete. Burke, 65, says he doubts he’ll ever travel in an all-electric airplane – but he believes his granddaughter, born last month, might.
He noted that the city recently hired its first airport sustainability coordinator, Elizabeth Lehman, who is tasked with creating the airport’s first sustainability master plan, which will outline environmental goals for the new airport.
But a lot has to happen before then. Among the challenges facing California, Cleveland and other communities that want to be ready for the coming electric aircraft revolution: * And perhaps the biggest challenge: approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and other government bodies that will regulate flight patterns, pilot training, takeoff and landing rules and numerous other topics.“We are making steady and significant progress in certifying aircraft and pilots and planning for integrating these aircraft into the airspace,” said an FAA spokesperson this week. “We’ll be ready for air taxi operators when they’re ready to fly.
The motivation for all of this innovation is clear – air travel is a major, and growing, contributor to global warming.