gaznav wrote:What a load of hoop from ZeroAvia - “Off Airport Landing” and “The aircraft landed normally on its wheels in a flat grass field and almost came to a stop, but was damaged as it caught the left main gear and wing in the uneven terrain at the end of the field at low speed.”
Nope, the aircraft crashed on landing...end of story. Look at the photo!
I think I would prefer to look at the positives. This is a prototype for a technology that may eventually allow us to keep enjoying our hobby after the dead dinosaur lobby have succeeded in ending our use of liquified T-Rex to launch ourselves skywards.
A crash or forced landing of an aircraft fuelled by hydrogen is sadly inevitable. Whilst this was almost certainly not part of the test programme, it has no doubt given valuable real life experience of the aftermath. Looking at the pictures, a similar result in an AVGAS fuelled aircraft could have likely resulted in a post crash fire and almost certainly would have led to a fuel leak and resultant soil contamination. The press release is carefully worded and only the AAIB report will publish the facts, but it appears in this incident the hydrogen fuel was harmlessly vented by the crew following the incident. Significantly reducing the potential for further environmental damage.
Whether you like it or loath it, the future demise of traditional fuels is inevitable so we should embrace it and ensure the replacement is applicable to our aircraft too. Batteries are currently not efficient or light enough to be truly viable as a 100LL replacement (the current pipistrel is only really useful for 1 hour endurance, and the lack of charging infrastructure and time to recharge make it great for its intended use of a-a training flights but less useful for most post licence GA flying), hydrogen fuel cells offer a very similar experience to traditional fuels (either a direct refuel from a pump or a quick swap of pre-filled hydrogen cartridges) and appear to be the most appropriate future fuel source for GA.