This summer, the Liège, Maastricht-Aachen, and Würselen-Aachen airports will debut their first publicly accessible electric plane flights, under the Electrifly project, according to Belga.
The flights will be operated on a two-seater aircraft provided by Slovenian manufacturer Pipistrel, marking a significant move toward the electrification of part of the fleet, believes Wouter Dewulf, an aviation economist at UAntwerpen.
Interested travellers can take advantage of the Electrifly project to journey between Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany from 1 July to 31 August. Flight tickets, the cost of which are split between the pilot and passengers, can be booked on the Electrifly website.
Electric plane flights are still relatively rare. "Until now, these aircraft have mainly been used for training, take-offs, and landings, primarily in Liège and Antwerp," says Dewulf. "These aircraft can last about 50 minutes and are fantastic economically and ecologically compared to current kerosene planes."
However, these devices are somewhat limited in terms of seating capacity and autonomy, primarily due to the hefty weight of the lithium-ion batteries required for longer flights.
Dewulf suggests that "this could change within the next ten to fifteen years, much like electric cars." He cites a technical university project in Delft, the Netherlands, which envisions constructing a 90-seater aircraft capable of 500 to 600 kilometres of flight within a decade.
Despite this, it appears that manufacturers are increasingly focusing their research on hydrogen and SAF, a so-called sustainable fuel already in use, for medium and long-haul flights.
