New electric airliner project emerges in Spain
A rendering of how the projected electric plane might look like in Volotea’s livery.
Pictures: Dante Aeronautical
Spanish airlines Volotea (a regional low cost carrier) and Air Nostrum (which operates under the Iberia Regional brand) have formed a consortium with aerospace engineering firm Dante Aeronautical to pursue yet another electric passenger aircraft project.
Dante Aeronautical is a startup which has been involved in the Sydney Seaplanes electrification plan in Australia (listen to our podcast with Sydney Seaplanes founder, Aaron Shaw, here) and also in the Islas project to launch a seaplane-only airline in the Balearic islands.
The plane in question is expected to be in the 9-19 seat category, which leads to the question of whether is it too small for these two operators.
Unlike in Norway, where very short very thin routes are common and, for some communities, a public necessity, neither Air Nostrum nor Volotea operate such small aircraft. Both airlines have extensive regional networks with plenty of relatively small airports, but they operate CRJs in the case of Air Nostrum and A319/320s (and until recently B717s) in the case of Volotea.
Are the lower operating costs of all electric aircraft going to open up new segments of demand for air travel, by unlocking new destinations and rearranging schedules making them more frequent? Maybe (and this is, in part the case made by the likes of Heart Aerospace or regional authorities in Northern Finland), but it is uncertain up to which point.
But, we are not quite there yet…in any case the participation of the two airlines will involve mainly sharing data and operational know-how during the design stages.
For the time being this type of projects will be reliant on public funds. In this particular case, the project has been presented to the Transports Ministry of Spain as eligible for some of the European post-pandemic recovery funds, which have been allocated a budget of some €42M.
The announcement comes with a rather ambitious calendar and very similar to that of the Wideroe-Rolls-Royce-Tecnam consortium in Norway: 2024 to have the aircraft certified and 2026 to start regular operations.