Monte, Cranfield Aerospace Forge Deal to Bring Zero-Emission Flight to Australia

Monte Air­craft Leas­ing Ltd (Monte) announced a three-par­ty agree­ment with Cran­field Aero­space Solu­tions (CAeS) and Aus­tralian air char­ter com­pa­ny, Tor­res Strait Air (TSA), to con­vert up to ten Brit­ten-Nor­man Islander air­craft to hydro­gen-elec­tric pow­er, reports a press release.

The deal, which comes short­ly after Tor­res Strait Air signed a LOI (Let­ter of Intent) for ten new con­ven­tion­al Brit­ten-Nor­man Islander air­craft, will see Monte, a com­pa­ny financ­ing low emis­sion and zero emis­sion tech­nolo­gies in the sub-region­al avi­a­tion mar­ket, pro­vide mon­ey to TSA for the con­ver­sion of exist­ing Brit­ten-Nor­man Islanders, along­side CAeS inte­grat­ing its hydro­gen-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem into the air­craft.

CAeS and Monte’s part­ner­ship vision, dat­ing back to Novem­ber 2022 when the lat­ter signed an LOI to pur­chase 40 mod­i­fi­ca­tion kits, is to bring financ­ing and leas­ing solu­tions to sub-region­al oper­a­tors to enable them to adopt zero-emis­sions air­craft oper­a­tions.

Tim­o­thy Eyre, COO at Monte, com­ment­ed, “We are excit­ed to sup­port Tor­res Strait Air in the decar­bon­i­sa­tion of their fleet and look for­ward to work­ing with our part­ners at Cran­field Aero­space Solu­tions on this excit­ing project. This agree­ment high­lights Monte’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing region­al avi­a­tion oper­a­tors glob­al­ly with their sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals.”

Tim­o­thy Eyre

The deal will enable TSA, which cur­rent­ly oper­ates a fleet of 11 air­craft from Horn Island, to serve the vital air trans­port needs of the Tor­res Strait com­mu­ni­ty in a sus­tain­able way with zero-emis­sion flight.

Jen­ny Kavanagh, Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer at CAeS, remarked, “We’re delight­ed to be expand­ing into the Aus­tralian mar­ket with our world-lead­ing hydro­gen propul­sion tech­nol­o­gy. And Daniel Takai, CEO at TSA, added, “This part­ner­ship is the com­mence­ment of Tor­res Strait Air’s jour­ney towards a more sus­tain­able future.”

Back­ground

The release explains, “CAeS is a UK-based avi­a­tion pio­neer which, via Project Fres­son, is devel­op­ing a world-lead­ing hydro­gen propul­sion sys­tem for the Brit­ten Nor­man Islander, with the aim to deliv­er the world’s first, zero-emis­sions, reg­u­la­to­ry cer­ti­fied pas­sen­ger air­craft solu­tion by 2026. The company’s ulti­mate goal is to become an air­framer of low and zero car­bon sub-region­al and region­al air­craft and to play a crit­i­cal role in the decar­bon­i­sa­tion of the avi­a­tion indus­try.”

Jen­ny Kavanagh

It con­tin­ues, “CAeS was cre­at­ed out of Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty and has been oper­at­ing as a com­mer­cial enti­ty at the cut­ting edge of air­craft devel­op­ment for over 30 years, hav­ing been trust­ed by glob­al aero­space OEMs, includ­ing Rolls Royce, Air­bus, Boe­ing as well as NASA to under­take com­plex R&D projects which have includ­ed air­craft design, mod­i­fi­ca­tion and assem­bly.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.montecleantech.com/

https://cranfieldaerospace.com/

http://torresair.com/

(Top image: Monte)