ZeroAvia, FEAM Aero Sign MOU “for MRO of Hydrogen-Electric Aircraft Engines”

Zeroavia announced this week it has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) with FEAM Aero for the retro­fit, main­te­nance, repair and oper­a­tions (MRO), as well as tech­ni­cal sup­port, of its hydro­gen-elec­tric engines, reports a press release.

ZeroAvia’s first engine design for 9–19 seat air­craft is already sub­ject for a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion appli­ca­tion to reg­u­la­tors, and with thou­sands of pow­er­train pre-orders in place, “the com­pa­ny is prepar­ing a net­work that can sup­port oper­a­tors in con­vert­ing their fleets to zero-emis­sion propul­sion sys­tems and then pro­vide the required main­te­nance sup­port,” explains the release.

As part of the MOU, the par­ties will inves­ti­gate how FEAM Aero’s 50+ loca­tions can sup­port MRO ser­vices for oper­a­tors lever­ag­ing ZeroAvia’s tech­nol­o­gy. FEAM already active­ly ser­vices fleets rel­e­vant to ZeroAvia’s sec­ond pow­er­train design for 30–90 seat air­craft, includ­ing Dash 8 and CRJ air­craft.

As anoth­er aspect of the agree­ment, FEAM will explore estab­lish­ing a green hydro­gen pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty at one of its loca­tions in the U.S in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ZeroAvia, enabling the sup­port of ear­ly retro­fit, test­ing and train­ing.

FEAM Aero

James Peck, Chief Cus­tomer Offi­cer of ZeroAvia, com­ment­ed, “Fuel cell and elec­tric propul­sion sys­tems will keep air­craft fly­ing longer, but the improved eco­nom­ics and great­ly reduced envi­ron­men­tal impact also means there’ll be more fly­ing. So there is a big oppor­tu­ni­ty for MRO providers in this tran­si­tion.”

He con­tin­ued, “ZeroAvia needs to part­ner and build a net­work that can sup­port our cus­tomers, who are already plan­ning their switch away from com­bus­tion engines and FEAM Aero has an excep­tion­al track record of ser­vice and an uncom­pro­mis­ing focus on safe­ty and qual­i­ty, as well as strong align­ment with ZeroAvia’s val­ues.”

Dan Allawat, Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer, FEAM Aero, added, “ZeroAvia is a lead­ing inno­va­tor in clean avi­a­tion that is rapid­ly advanc­ing towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for a sys­tem that can solve some of these chal­lenges, so we’re excit­ed to explore what this means for MRO and train­ing in the years to come.”

Back­ground

Dur­ing the last 15 months, ZeroAvia has been flight test­ing a pro­to­type of its ZA600 engine aboard a Dornier 228 air­craft at its UK base in Kem­ble, Glouces­ter­shire.

With a pri­ma­ry focus on devel­op­ing hydro­gen-elec­tric (fuel cell-pow­ered) engines, ZeroAvia has sub­mit­ted its first pow­er­train for up to 20 seat planes for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with a tar­get of the end of 2025 and is work­ing on a larg­er pow­er­train for 30–90 seat air­craft by 2027.

It has secured exper­i­men­tal cer­tifi­cates to test its engines in three sep­a­rate test­bed air­craft with the FAA and CAA and passed sig­nif­i­cant flight tri­al mile­stones. 

James Peck

The com­pa­ny has signed a num­ber of key engi­neer­ing part­ner­ships with major air­craft OEMs and has near­ly 2,000 pre-orders for engines from a num­ber of the major glob­al air­lines, with future rev­enue poten­tial over USD10 bil­lion.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://zeroavia.com/

https://feam.aero/

(Top image: ZeroAvia)

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