Aero Perspectives

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With another Aero behind us—the 24th for the show, I’m told—I continue to be impressed with how this event showcases what’s happening beyond what many of us believe to be the center of the GA universe. That’s the U.S., in case I’m being too subtle here.

This turns out to be an impressive body of activity and innovation and given the size of Aero, I know I didn’t catch it all. As I said earlier in the week, electric propulsion continues to be the front-and-center technological driver. Electrics were big two years ago, but with the appearance of Siemens with several high-profile exhibits, including the battery-powered Extra 330, this trend is accelerating. (Here’s a video on that.)

Almost all of the energy is coming from Europe in this segment, with China having a presence, too. There’s research in the U.S. and some small industrializations, but nothing like the foursquare commitment you see in Europe. This is because in Europe, there’s general acceptance that climate and emissions regulations will increasingly pressure the internal combustion engine. It’s simply woven into the fabric of business thinking and planning.

In all of these discussions here in Germany, you hear the phrases “low emissions” or “emissions free.” Noise is also a consideration, too. Some airports in Germany prohibit flying on the weekends and electrics will absolutely address this. As I’ve said before, the U.S. lags the rest of the world in accepting that climate change regulations are coming. It also lags the world in developing products to make money in developing and selling low-carbon technologies.

Nonetheless, electric propulsion is still significantly hobbled against the internal combustion standard. Although cheap to operate, pure electrics lack endurance and hybrids are just reaching the early developmental stage. Even at that, they will be more expensive to buy and will, initially, have neither the speed nor the payload of equivalent gasoline aircraft. But they will have lower emissions and noise signatures and that’s what animates the European market, a trend that may migrate to China, given that country’s horrible air pollution.

I did an informal poll of a few people to estimate when electric aircraft would have significant market presence. I’ll concede that “significant presence” is an ambiguous metric. I ran into Piper CEO Simon Caldecott in the Siemens booth and asked him for his estimate. He thought about five years and that’s the time frame Diamond’s Christian Dries also picked.

Frank Anton, who is Siemens’ go-to guy on motor and control technology, thought the timeline is more like a decade or a little inside of that. I agree with that assessment and not just because battery capacity is lacking, although that is a drag on market appeal. I just think it will take manufacturers that long to mature basic electric propulsion to the point that buyers accept it as practical and economically realistic and sustainable. And also because historically, energy transitions have always occurred over decades, not years. Coal took a decade or more to displace wood as a fuel and oil similarly eroded coal over many years and a century later, coal is still a prime mover, although in decline.

Later this month, I’ll have a video tour of a brushless DC motor with Dr. Anton. This technology is fascinating and is the core enabler for electric aircraft. The power density of these devices is just staggering and I asked Dr. Anton why we couldn’t do this 15 years ago. “Two reasons,” he said. “We have now better computer simulations of our motors and we have also materials we didn’t have 20 years ago.” Plus, the world’s expanding economy runs evermore on electric propulsion, controls and actuators. If you stripped out the electrics in even a mid-priced new car, you’d be astonished at how much there is. Not that all of this hardware is cheap, either. Mike Kraft of Lycoming told me the most expensive part of the IE2 electronic engine is the wiring harness.

What I’d Like to Fly

I’m often asked this by readers who flag me down for a chat, as though being an aviation journalist somehow conveys steely-eyed wisdom in evaluating airplanes. The reality is, I’m just a guy with a notebook and camera and some questions. (Increasingly, the notebook is empty; the camera does it all and the questions invoke amnesia or an email forward to the legal department.)

This year, the answer was easy: E-Volo’s Volocopter. If you’ve seen one white, composite, two-seat ultralight with a bubble canopy powered by a Rotax 912 iS, you’ve seen them all and they were at Aero in the dozens. But the Volocopter is something truly different.

The first time I saw it, I realized that these guys really understand the concept of distributed electric power and they used it to rethink the helicopter concept. In essence, the Volocopter is nothing but a scaled-up, man-carrying version of a Phantom Quad copter. But it’s a lot more controllable and by dint of multiple motors, it’s more reliable and safer. And I like it a lot better than the Ehang 180 dual quad design.

People fly things for different reasons. For some, it’s to go places; for some, it’s mastery of a complex machine; for some, it’s the speed. But many of us just like to loft above the surface and look down at things, preferably from the lowest practical altitude. The actual manipulation of controls to accomplish this is secondary.

Flying at 100 feet in a Volocopter fulfills that design brief and that’s why it appeals to me. It’s got superb auto hover and stability so this is an aircraft you could be taught to fly in under an hour.

Maybe it will have an interactive app so you can learn its various systems and safety controls, but it’s flying as simple as it’s likely to get. Alan Klapmeier once famously said the Cirrus line, with its parachute, was meant to prove you don’t need special DNA to fly. I don’t think Cirrus quite proved that, but with the Volocopter, I suspect eVolo might.

Where Are the Chinese?

Not at Aero, at least not in great numbers. When I attended in 2014, there were numerous Chinese wandering the halls, giving the impression that yes, this China aviation thing is really going to explode.

I didn’t see that this year, nor did I see as many Chinese companies or organizations represented. Nor do I hear sales people and company executives talking about the bottomless pit of aircraft demand in China for, as well we know, beating inside the heart of every Chinese is the burning need to fly.

A source I know with a good feel for the numbers says that general aviation aircraft growth in China is nearly flat and far below expectations of some. There are fewer than 1500 piston airplanes in China. He said the time necessary to get a flight plan approved has dropped from, on average, a week to maybe 72 hours. Despite the starry eyes, private aviation in China is still an unrealized dream. There’s always next year.

Is Aero Expensive to Attend?

Not really. For exhibitors, booth costs are about what they are at Sun ‘n Fun. Andrew Barker of TruTrak and Craig Barnett of Scheme Designers both told me Aero costs them just about what other shows do. Add to that the cost of the flight over the Atlantic. That’s typically $1100 to $1300, although this year I found a deal on Swiss for $825.

Hotels in Europe can be expensive, but don’t have to be. I was just handed my bill for four nights and it came to $90.40 a night, including breakfast. That’s exactly half what we paid in Lakeland for Sun ‘n Fun, where the hotels don’t miss an opportunity to gouge during the show and their idea of breakfast is a binary chemical bond with Styrofoam. I generally don’t stay in the Friedrichshafen area, but drive across the border into Austria, where hotels are cheaper.

Meals will nick you a little more. For dinner, I paid between $22 and $32. Lunch will be $15, usually. But the food is just way, way the hell better, so I don’t mind paying a little more and it’s really not that much more at all. On the other hand, you simply cannot find funnel cake or fried butter. I’ve had to come to grips with that, but I’ve managed,

As for the show itself, admission fees are €18 a day or $20.34 compared to $37 for Sun ‘n Fun. Of course, there’s no airshow at Aero and there is at Sun ‘n Fun. At Aero, kids under 16 get it in for free; at Sun ‘n Fun, the cutoff is 10 years old, although there is a youth ticket for $15. If all that sounds affordable, it is. It’s especially so now that the dollar is down to $1.13 against the Euro. Put Aero on your bucket list. You can afford it. Next year, the two shows will be held during the same week. That sorta sucks. Can’t they coordinate these things better, as they have in the past?

Culture Clash

Europe in general and the European Union specifically have a deserved reputation for overregulation and silly rules. For example, they have a profusion of different weight limits for what we in the U.S. think of as light sport aircraft. Why not rationalize that?

On the other hand, Europeans can be quite relaxed about other things. My friend Thomas Borchert of the German fliegermagazin told me there at least two Uber-type aviation ride sharing services in Germany. They’re supposed to be cost sharing arrangements, but the regulators don’t specify the distribution of that cost sharing. That’s refreshingly hands off.

Might not work in the U.S. because of our national ethos of believing if something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. Would enough would-be charter pilots abuse such a thing to create a real safety issue? Probably. And our distorted tort system would be standing by to squeeze some money out of it, disaster or not.

Europe ought to be grateful it doesn’t have to suffer with that.

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