Successful operation for Airbus. Its electric aircraft E-Fan has successfully crossing the English Channel, hosted landing in Marck airfield, near Calais by Airbus engineers, Xavier Bertrand and some local elected after about 40 minutes flight .
All welcomed the technological prowess. Agnès Paillard, president of Voltair, the subsidiary created by Airbus to design and market the E-fan, highlighted the group’s capacity for innovation, that has “to work as a small start-up agile “to work with large groups such as Siemens or Safran, research institutes (CEA) as well as engineering schools and SMEs.
Originally electric airplane, there are indeed a royannaise SMEs, Aero Composites Saintonge (ACS), and especially its founder, Didier Esteyne. Amateur airplane pilot and small planes creator, he is the father of the E-Fan, which was completely designed for electric propulsion.
Autonomy of 50 minutes
If the proportions of the aircraft remain modest – it measures 9.5 meters per 600 kilograms, and has a autonomy of 50 minutes – they are perfectly adapted to the market for training aircraft: the electric aircraft therefore has a cost advantage because it does not consume kerosene, and its silence is popular with local residents, allowing them to fly much more extended opening hours.
Airbus and provides marketing the E-Fan 2.0, which will be a two-seater, based on a production of 60 to 80 aircraft per year in its new assembly line at Airport Pau-Pyrenees. Thus, Patrick Gandil, Director of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), “the feat is part of an industrial logic: there is a project built upstream, and economic future. Pilot training in France is a very important market, because we are the second country in the aerospace world after the US, and we are half of European drivers “
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An E-Fan 4.0 project
But the manufacturer does not stop there: an E-Fan 4.0 is planned, and the objective is to put into service regional aircraft, capable of carrying a hundred people, by 2030. The challenges to achieve many remain, as recognized Patrick Gandil, “We’ll have to be a pioneer in this field, in technology as in regulation and certification that simply do not exist for electric aircraft. “
Airbus, which offers a beautiful day with this communication operation, was not deprived of the comparison with the successful crossing of the English Channel 109 years ago by Louis Blériot. Proof that the symbol particularly close to his heart, a few days earlier, the aircraft manufacturer Pipistrel Slovenia was banned attempting the same journey by Siemens, who designed his engine and that of the E-Fan. The French Hughes Duval still blown politeness Airbus Thursday, crossing the English Channel aboard a cry Cry, a model with an electric motor, which had nevertheless pulled off another aircraft.
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