Past and future for British Airways: B747 and ZeroAvia's hydrogen

Long road ahead to scale up

Coincidental or not, within a couple of days British Airways has said goodbye to its last Boeing 747s, perhaps its most iconic aircraft ever, and announced a partnership with one of the most promising startups in the field of hydrogen propulsion, ZeroAvia.

Last of the line

If you wish to learn more about ZeroAvia and the technology they are developing, I recommend you check out this podcast I did with its CTO, Katya Akulinicheva, a few weeks ago, where we reviewed in depth the milestones and goals of this ambitious emerging company.

Of course, ZeroAvia’s technology or, more generally, the hydrogen economy, is still quite far from being able to power Boeing 747-sized aircraft, but step by step green flying is exiting the narrow niche where it had so far been confined to and becoming part and parcel of the major players’ long term strategy.

The shorter term approach to green aviation goes through tech-assisted incremental improvements to existing technology, but, nevertheless, difficult not to note the symbolism of the news sequence!