ZeroAvia and AGS Airports partner on future hydrogen air travel in Scotland

ZeroAvia has agreed to explore the devel­op­ment of hydro­gen fuel infra­struc­ture with AGS Air­ports, includ­ing reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work require­ments and resourc­ing required for deliv­er­ing zero-emis­sion flights from Aberdeen and Glas­gow air­ports.

AGS owns and oper­ates Aberdeen, Glas­gow and Southamp­ton air­ports, and will work with ZeroAvia to assess oppor­tu­ni­ties for hydro­gen pro­duc­tion onsite, as well as explor­ing poten­tial com­mer­cial routes.

Switch­ing some routes to air­craft pow­ered by ZeroAvia’s hydro­gen-elec­tric pow­er­train will help AGS Air­ports to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce car­bon emis­sions from air­craft and reduce noise and air qual­i­ty impacts local­ly.

AGS will explore how hydro­gen can be used to remove emis­sions across ground oper­a­tions, while ZeroAvia will share its expe­ri­ence in devel­op­ing and oper­at­ing its Hydro­gen Air­port Refu­elling Ecosys­tem (HARE) at Cotswold Air­port in Glouces­ter­shire.

The part­ners will work towards a flight demon­stra­tion pow­ered by ZeroAvia’s ZA600 600kW hydro­gen-elec­tric engine, which is on a path towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by 2025. Com­mer­cial routes from Scotland’s biggest city, Glas­gow, could fol­low soon after.

Arnab Chat­ter­jee, VP for infra­struc­ture at ZeroAvia, said: “In recent months we have stepped up our work with air­ports sig­nif­i­cant­ly to bet­ter under­stand the oper­a­tional needs and require­ments for hydro­gen as a fuel.

“Work­ing with the team at AGS allows us to plan for some of the com­mer­cial routes that we will be able to sup­port in a lit­tle over two years’ time and do so in the set­ting of a major inter­na­tion­al air­port.”

AGS Air­ports chief exec­u­tive Derek Provan added: “The devel­op­ment of hydro­gen pow­ered air­craft has the poten­tial to com­plete­ly rev­o­lu­tionise avi­a­tion and is becom­ing an increas­ing­ly viable option for region­al and short-haul air­craft.

“As a region­al air­port group serv­ing the High­lands and Islands of Scot­land as well as the Chan­nel Islands from Southamp­ton, AGS will be the per­fect test­bed for hydro­gen flight. Through our part­ner­ship with ZeroAvia we will address some of the chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with gen­er­a­tion, deliv­ery and stor­age of hydro­gen on-site.”

One month ago, ZeroAvia acquired fuel cell stack inno­va­tor HyPoint, whose advanced high-tem­per­a­ture fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy for increas­ing pow­er out­put and ener­gy den­si­ty of avi­a­tion fuel cell pow­er­trains will add to ZeroAvia’s exper­tise in devel­op­ing the full pow­er­train to enable hydro­gen-elec­tric flight.

ZeroAvia Acquires Lead­ing Fuel Cell Stack Inno­va­tor HyPoint

In August, the Care and Equi­ty, Health­care Logis­tics UAS Scot­land (CAELUS) Project secured £10.1 mil­lion fund­ing from the Future Flight Chal­lenge at UK Research and Inno­va­tion (UKRI). Led by AGS Air­ports, CAELUS brings togeth­er 16 part­ners that also includes NATS and NHS Scot­land.

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