✈️ #17: The second century of flight

This week’s issue is a little different than usual. Instead of discussing one topic in depth, I want to announce that I will change the name of the newsletter and tell you why I do that.

For 17 issues, this newsletter was called "Airline Food for Thought," a wordplay on the often horrible airline food, which I thought was funny - and still do. Nevertheless, I'm changing it because I don't think this name covers the content of the newsletter. While I do want to give you some food for thought, I rarely write about airlines or large scale flight operations in general.

What I do write about is the future of aviation and the technologies and operating models that will shape this future. Developments often start by implementing these technologies on the smallest aircraft. The electrification of aviation began two years ago with the two-seater Pipistrel Velis Electro. And the electric aircraft we will see in the coming decade will have a passenger capacity closer to the Pipistrel than to a 737.

The same goes for that other pillar of progress: digitization. The first fully autonomous flights are carried out by Cessna Caravans, and the next biggest challenge in Air Traffic Management will be integrating small unmanned vehicles into the airspace.

These developments show that something bigger is happening in aviation. We are closing down the first century of flight - a century that started a little over 100 years ago with the Wright Flyer taking off at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the devastating First World War that proved to be an incubator for aviation, and Charles Lindbergh's first non-stop flight across the Atlantic in 1927.

Daring to look ahead

At the beginning of the first century of flight, Kees Valkenstein wrote the book "De aeroplaan van m'nheer Vliegenthert" (roughly translated from Dutch: Mister Vliegenthert's Aeroplane). The story, published in 1910, is about an aircraft owner whose aircraft gets stolen, set in the year 2010 - yes, one hundred years into the future. It's amazing how the author dares to describe the long-term future of aviation only seven years after the first-ever aircraft took flight in North Carolina. Would you dare to predict that a recent invention will still be there in the next century?

Even though you can tell from the pictures that the author wasn't even close to what has been achieved a hundred years later, the fact that he was able to predict that aviation would still be there in 2010 is a remarkable achievement.

The turn of the century in aviation is marked by aircraft being able to fly for 17 hours, carrying hundreds of people across continents. Pick two random countries, and there is a good chance that you can travel from one to the other in less than 24 hours - an achievement no one could have predicted when Kees Valkenstein published his book.

However, the negative impact that aviation has on the environment is increasingly casting a shadow over these achievements. We are seeing more protesters and policymakers who want aviation to reduce its carbon footprint significantly. Even though aviation's worldwide relative carbon footprint is only 3%, the fact that other polluters, like the automotive industry, are rapidly electrifying will cause aviation's share to increase in the upcoming years. Aviation is moving in the right direction, but not at the required pace, and this will need to change.

Another issue that needs to change is that aviation operations are increasingly concentrated at large airport hubs. The gigantic mazes where travelers spend hours before they end up in the largest, noisiest, and most polluting aircraft. Nobody wants to travel via a hub, but people do it because it's often the cheapest option. And it is difficult to argue with decisions based on costs. However, it would be nice if we could reduce the time we spend at airports, diminishing the time we have to stand in line for security checks, hoping to board a cheap but delayed flight soon while eating an expensive sandwich.

The first steps into a new era

Fortunately, the technologies that will enable these changes are already being developed, at the beginning of the second century of flight. Predicting what this second century will bring is probably just as hard as predicting in 1910 what the first century would bring. Nevertheless, aviation is aiming for a future with cleaner aircraft and less crowded airports.

The first steps in emission-free aviation have already been taken, while at the same time, ongoing developments in digitization are making flights available to more airports than ever before. This enables aviation operations to decentralize, allowing smaller airports to become more economically viable and large airports to become more breathable, with shorter lines and more on-time flights.

Since this newsletter has been covering these topics for a while now and will continue to do so in the future, I have decided to change the name to "The Second Century of Flight." I am not going to predict what aviation will look like in 100 years' time, but I will guide you along the way.

So from the next issue on, look out for ‘The second century of flight’. All the issues from this newsletter are available at secondcentury.beehiiv.com.

I am curious about what you think about the new name and if you too feel that a new era of aviation is starting. You can let me know by sending an email to [email protected] or by sending a message via LinkedIn.

For more about me, visit giel.io