534
Time to pass those savings onto the ~~consumer~~ shareholders!
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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People down here acting like $5 to keep 25,000 lbs in the air for 30 minutes is not a milestone worth announcing.
"Be perfect NOW" π€£
There are also flights where this could be used as fully electric right now, or very soon if they increase range a bit. If you fly from Tallinn to anywhere via Finnair, you go through Helsinki, that's like a 30 minute flight. And the reason you don't just drive to Helsinki is that you'd have to take the ferry which costs more money, takes over an hour and the Helsinki airport isn't that close to the port.
Similarly, you can fly from Tallinn to the two bigger islands here in Estonia, very short flights versus like a 3 or 4 hour bus ride involving a ferry. 30 and 40 minute flights with the current 30-40 person planes that company uses.
This plane is a piblicity stunt and will never be a viable product (the company itself said it is not meant for commercial production)
This "jet" has a lower max speed than a Cessna 150, a service ceiling of 2,000 AGL - far less than any commercial aircraft. It weighs 25,000 pounds with no passengers or cargo, almost certainly it's max weight. They can't even fit a 2nd pilot
They do not disclose how much energy was actually used, just a vague "$5" figure and a listed max power of 1MW
It's just a marketing ploy and you fell for it
It just occurred to me that with the recent advancements in cargo-container-sized nuclear reactors, they would excellent fit to power aircraft due to their high energy densities. There were attempts at nuclear-powered aircraft in the past using older technology, but IIRC they irradiated crews and were primarily for bombers carrying nukes that would supposedly need to be in the air continuously for days at a time.
You forgot the /s
They are not being sarcastic. Nuclear power is far more viable than all-electric in commercial aviation
Oh boy... So, they took off from a test facility adjacent to Plattsburgh International Airport. I don't see it stated, but I give it 98% they landed where they took off. Plattsburgh has some of the lowest residential and commercial electricity costs in the country, so that $5 nets them about 110kWh of juice.
They also reached a maximum altitude of 1,100 feet with a plane that weighs in excess of 25,000 pounds. Lifting 25,000 pounds up to 1,100 feet takes 37 million joules of added potential energy, or a bit above 10 kWh.
The entire remaining 100kWh of energy budget is the equivalent of accelerating the 25,000 pound aircraft up to 252 meters/second at perfect efficiency in a vacuum. This flight was not going very high, and it was not going very fast.
If the economics of their hybrid idea work out, it'll be fantastic, but the attempt at marketing over transparency here doesn't fill me with optimism.
I give it 98% they landed where they took off
They did. It can bee seen in the press release photos and the video they released
so that $5 nets them about 110kWh of juice
They would have needed more than that. Likely got some lower rate somehow
This flight was not going very high, and it was not going very fast
Vne, max airspeed, of this plane is 140 knots (72 m/s). Less than a Cessna 150. Max altitude is 2,000 feet AGL, significantly lower than a Cessna 150
If the economics of their hybrid idea work out, itβll be fantastic
It would be, but I highly doubt it. Energy density of batteries is simply too low. This plane can barely fly at slow speeds with no cargo or passengers, and with a cockpit stripped down to a single pilot. Hybrid thrust would be heavier than either jet A or battery-electric, and it still has the downsides of including batteries for the entire flight
Hydrogen or nuclear will be viable before battery-electric in aviation
Thank you for that.
If they can fly a small airliner for 30 minutes for $5. Either there's a whole lot they're leaving out. or they're not paying anywhere near what I pay for electricity.
They say the engines delivered more than 1 megawatt of power. Cool, so 1 MW over 30 minutes. That's 500kWh. Which means if they paid $5 for it. They paid 1 cent per kWh. Now i don't know about you guys. But i sure as hell don't pay 1 cent per kWh.
they also dont specify how many kwh they used. which is why i assumed a sustained 1mw of power. they also dont say how much the plane weighted. only what it could potentially carry. that doesn't mean that's what it weighted in the test.
don't get me wrong. cool stuff to fly electric planes. but i can't help but feel incredibly sceptic when they leave out a lot of numbers while making the insane claim that they only used $5 worth of electricity.
Heart Aerospace is claiming that the hybrid-electric ES-30 could reduce airline costs of operating regional aircraft by more than 40 percent.
How much you want to bet that this 40% savings will never make it to the customers' pockets?
If there are savings, it would make it in customer's pockets. Aviation is incredibly competitive
I would, however, bet against them ever achieving that savings. Maybe they can find a battery-electric hybrid configuration that shaves off a percent or two, but I find even that unlikely
Even if they don't make it, the whole fact that the aviation industry goes less CO2 intensive would be a good win.
You know what would be a good win? Charging customers the same rates to power their homes as the operators of this aircraft.
Question is, are they actually gonna use them now?
Ticket prices will in fact go up because they had to spend money on these new planes.
How would they ever recoup their cost? Do you even capitalism bro? (/s)
For most airlines the biggest cost is fuel, they reliably make the money back on the planes themselves because they run them for 30 years, so it's a long-term investment but it will pay off.
Over the 30 years this aircraft could theoretically be in operation fuel costs are going to skyrocket. So not only is it saving some money today, it's saving a lot of money tomorrow. We may even get to the point where aviation fuel becomes literally unavailable, an electric aircraft like this is a pretty good insurance policy. But you do have to buy a whole new aircraft, and maybe you've still got 20 years on your current one, so you need to make that money back, and one of the best ways to ensure that you pay off that cost is to have more customers, and the best way to have more customers is to have cheap fairs. You can afford cheap affairs because you'll feel costs a lower.
Airlines almost never own an aircraft. They sell to banks and lease back, so they have smooth annual OPEX costs, not large CAPEX costs every few years.
"Every few years?" You mean every 14 years, right? And this article was even nearly 2 years ago, so theyre probably even older now: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/aircraft-age-iata-airbus-boeing-b2665192.html
I mean from a fleet of 30 planes they could (in theory) buy/retire one or two a year without big spikes in cash needs.
In other words the Us wonβt use this technology because it hurts the oil companies pockets
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