Electric planes

Are electric planes the inevitable future of flying?

The aviation industry is one of the most cutthroat industries in the world. There is a significant initial investment for airlines from buying/leasing planes, operations cost, and customers also want the best service for their money. After all this, it is no surprise that the profit margins for these airlines are minimal, sometimes as less as 100 rupees per passenger for domestic flights.

Also, Airlines are a business, so purely as a business, it does not make sense for them to care about climate change or become carbon neutral. With a few exceptions, emitting more carbon does not cost the airlines anything. Still, it enables them to make more profit, so the theoretically correct thing for airlines is to emit the amount of carbon to generate the most profit, regardless of environmental consequences. Some say airlines care about climate change for public relations, and they’re right—but only to an extent. The most crucial reason why airlines are caring about climate change is one of the most haunting words in the airline industry, regulation. Globally, the aviation industry produces 2.1% of all human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and governments are slowly but surely taking steps to lose the carbon footprints of their countries. For the aviation industry, that means regulating airlines.

It’s started already in some sense. In France, the French national assembly has passed a bill that would stop short-haul flights on flight routes that could be travelled in two and a half hours or less by train. Here’s the worst thing for airlines: measures like this make absolute, perfect sense. With airports located away from city centres, security lines, less reliable departure times, and more, no journey that would take two to two and half hours by train could reasonably and reliably be accomplished faster by plane. So, there’s no real downside, but there’s the massive upside of shifting travellers onto trains, which in the case of France emit 77 times less carbon per passenger on journeys of this length.

*Figure 1: The bill if enacted in France will stop short haul flights*

The problem for airlines is that they don’t have any good arguments against regulations like these. A move away from the short-haul will start, but it won’t end there. As one of the more carbon-intensive industries, airlines will face increasing regulatory barriers to their operations—unless, of course, flying becomes less carbon-intensive.

So, airlines care about climate change because they are pragmatic, and it quickly and increasingly becomes the case that competitiveness, like companies, is linked to how green they are. Biofuels, engine efficiency improvements, carbon offsetting—these things all help, but they’re incremental changes that can only take flying from being very carbon-intense to carbon-intense. However, one solution can actually, realistically turn flying into a somewhat sustainable method of transport: electric aircraft.

Here’s the thing: electric aircrafts in themselves are no massive innovation. They existed in 1973 when the MB-E1 became the first electric plane to fly with a human crew. They existed in 2015 when the Solar Impulse 2 circumnavigated the world exclusively on solar power. They existed in 2020 when the Pipistrel Velis Electro became the first commercially-available type-rated electric-powered aircraft. Conclusion: there’s not a lot technologically preventing electric aircraft from existing, but rather it’s the business case. Batteries are more expensive and less energy-dense than fuel, so airlines always have free carbon emissions. It just always made sense to use petroleum-based fuel.

*Figure 2: MB E1, the first electric plane to fly with a human crew*

*Figure 3: Pipistrel Velis Electro, All electric aircraft made for commercial purpose*

But now that is changing. We have aircrafts that can be used for passenger traffic for short-range and fewer passengers per flight. Electric aircrafts make much more profit when operating short distances than standard aircraft. Therefore, airlines that generally operate within the range constraints of electric aircrafts are understandably the most welcoming of electric aircraft. For example, in India, many flights are small distances that would benefit from converting to electric. Not just the overall cost, but because aircrafts will get profits even with low passenger traffic from these flights, direct flights from tier 2 cities can become very normal.

The release of electric aircrafts will fundamentally break a long-held truth about aviation. Short-haul flying is currently more expensive, per kilometer, than long-haul flying, due to the high costs involved with ground operations at every airport. However, with electric planes available exclusively on shorter routes, at least in the future, there’s a reality in which it’s cheaper per kilometer to fly 500 km than 1500 km. This will also shift airlines’ focus to more regional route networks and connect cities and towns that previously were too small in passenger traffic to make economic sense for airlines. In short, not only will electric aircrafts allow airlines to continue to operate short-haul flights as regulations in the future ramp up, but they will allow them to increase flights in a sustainable, profitable way.

The future of flying seems inevitably electric because the business case is too strong to ignore.