PAS 2025: Air New Zealand, BETA Technologies Launch First “Energy by The Hour” Maintenance Program 

Air New Zealand (ANZ) and BETA Tech­nolo­gies, have strength­ened their part­ner­ship by launch­ing the Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty (AAM) industry’s first “Ener­gy By the Hour (EBH) Pro­gram,” reports a press release. This ini­tial test­bed pro­gram includes bat­tery replace­ment, main­te­nance and ser­vice needs, rep­re­sent­ing a mile­stone in the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and oper­a­tional sup­port of elec­tric avi­a­tion. 

The release explains, “The EBH Pro­gram will be tri­aled on Air New Zealand’s Tech Demon­stra­tor ALIA CTOL air­craft, which is sched­uled to be deliv­ered lat­er this fall, and sub­se­quent­ly applied to Air New Zealand’s addi­tion­al BETA air­craft, which are sched­uled to enter ser­vice in the com­ing years.” 

Under this pro­gram, BETA is to pro­vide the air­line with com­pre­hen­sive bat­tery man­age­ment ser­vices includ­ing per­for­mance mon­i­tor­ing, pre­dic­tive main­te­nance, pack replace­ment and end-of-life recy­cling. 

The project, which will be applied at a fixed hourly rate based on the util­i­sa­tion of the air­craft, is designed to ensure pre­dictabil­i­ty of oper­at­ing cost, while max­imis­ing bat­tery safe­ty, cycle life and uptime of the air­craft. 

@aviationintlnews

Beta Tech­nolo­gies’ Alia CX300 air­plane is being fea­tured this week in the Paris Air Show fly­ing dis­play as it con­tin­ues a Euro­pean tour that will cul­mi­nate in it being deliv­ered to launch cus­tomer Bris­tow in July.

♬ orig­i­nal sound — Avi­a­tion Inter­na­tion­al News

Shawn Hall, BETA’s Chief Rev­enue Offi­cer, remarked,We have devel­oped a pro­gram to ensure our cus­tomers receive the same type of pre­dictable main­te­nance cost ben­e­fits they are accus­tomed to with tra­di­tion­al pow­er by the hour pro­grams, but applied to bat­ter­ies.” Adding, “We recog­nise that the needs of oper­a­tors extend well beyond tak­ing deliv­ery of an air­craft.”  

The col­lab­o­ra­tion began in 2021 with the addi­tion of ALIA to Air New Zealand’s Mis­sion Next Gen Air­craft Pro­gram. Fol­low­ing an 18-month peri­od of due dili­gence and a down-selec­tion process from 30 OEMs, ANZ announced in 2023 that BETA’s ALIA CTOL would be its first pur­chase of a next gen­er­a­tion air­craft. 

Since, the part­ners have iden­ti­fied ini­tial route pos­si­bil­i­ties, and begun invest­ing in the key ele­ments of an AAM ecosys­tem, includ­ing charg­ing infra­struc­ture, addi­tion­al air­craft, and train­ing assets

Baden Smith, ANZ’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Strat­e­gy, Net­works and Fleet, com­ment­ed, “We are invest­ing in the BETA CX300 to dri­ve indus­try change in New Zealand as part of our com­mit­ment to decar­bon­is­ing our air­line.”

Once the Tech Demon­stra­tor is deliv­ered lat­er this year, Air New Zealand will under­go four months of ear­ly famil­iari­sa­tion prac­tices across the com­pa­ny,  includ­ing the pilot and oper­a­tional teams, as well as the route plan­ning and ground sup­port teams. 

The inte­gra­tion of this EBH pro­gram will facil­i­tate the oper­a­tional solu­tions and learn­ings for both part­ners dur­ing this time, refin­ing it ahead of com­mer­cial deploy­ments.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://beta.team

https://www.airnewzealand.co.uk

(Top image: BETA ALIA Dis­played at PAS)

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