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V IC T OR M A G A ZINE
Electric Dreams SHORT-HAUL ELECTRIC AVIATION WILL BE MAINSTREAM WITHIN THE NEXT 10 YEARS. BUT MAJOR BREAKTHROUGHS ARE STILL NEEDED BEFORE LONG-DISTANCE FLYING IS EMISSIONS-FREE words > HARRIET HIRSCHLER
Picture yourself flying from Velana International Airport in the Maldives to a luxurious island resort in a location as remote as it is beautiful. Below you is one of the most breathtaking but ecologically fragile places in the world – its very existence threatened by rising sea levels caused by CO2 emissions. Your flight will not be contributing, however, because you are onboard a seaplane powered by clean electricity. “It is short hops like these that are the most obvious and immediate targets for scaling up electric flight,” says Clive Jackson, Founder and Chairman of Victor. “Major breakthroughs
in electric propulsion mean it is now possible to retrofit existing planes, opening the skies to a new era of battery-powered transportation.” THE RETROFIT REVOLUTION In an effort to reduce emissions, various airlines are seeking an alternative for their fossil fuel aircraft, removing expensive polluting jet fuel from the flight equation and replacing it with electric batteries. Thanks to retrofitting, the electrification of planes is now underway. “Everything in aerospace starts with propulsion,” says Roie Ganzarski, CEO of magniX, which in December 2019 provided the propulsion system for the world’s first fully electric commercial aircraft, a six-seater Harbour Air DHC-2 Beaver. In May 2020, magniX successfully flew the largest all-electric commercial aircraft, a nine-seater Cessna 208B Grand Caravan. “The jet age of aviation happened
