STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

In this episode we discuss Airbus Corporate Helicopters (ACH) and their 70% marketshare of the yachting helicopter segment--is this sustainable, and recession-proof? Aerion, who was making headlines with their X2 supersonic corporate jet prototype, has shut down operations. What does this mean for the industry, and should other startups be nervous? And, Allen dives into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)--will it catch on and prove viable with new legislation proposing tax incentives for airlines that adopt it?

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection services here. If you're a radome design engineer, we can help. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Episode Transcript: Airbus Corporate Helicopters; Aerion Supersonic Shuts Down; Will Sustainable Aviation Fuel Actually Catch On?

0:00This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.

You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett.

0:18I'm Allen Hall.

0:19And here on struck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.

Alright, welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast. I'm your co host, Dan Blewett. On today's show, we've got a bunch of Boeing related news, some other news. So first, we'll start with Emirates, sending a warning to Boeing that it might refuse their 777 x shipment. That doesn't meet commitments. We'll talk about Airbus and some other helicopter market and our engineering segment today we'll talk a little bit more about the grounding issue the electrical issues that Boeing's had. And how does the complex fastening riveting? Just the order of operations in manufacturing played a role in that. And we'll also talk about sustainable jet fuels and a potential tax credit that's coming out in potential legislation. Lastly, on our EBT well segment, like a little bit about john Air Mobility as they're trying to get a will they have a partnership now with cae to accelerate design of a flight simulator. And we'll talk about the implications for aireon shutting down. Of course, Ariane is not an EBT well, but a supersonic jet company, now defunct, but this will certainly send a ripples throughout a lot of these throughout the industry, as a lot of these other startup companies, which were well funded like aireon, maybe wonder if they're next. So Alan, let's start here with with Emirates. So they warned Boeing that they were refused 777 x jets, if they fall short of contractual performance commitments, is this a big deal, or is this pretty sort of normal par for the course, it's normal if you're inside company to company, but it's unusual to see that get into the press.

2:06So somebody is getting upset, and those using the press as a leverage point. Because the aircraft manufacturer doesn't want to be in the press about that stuff. And they don't want it to spread that maybe their performance numbers are not being met. And on the triple seven, there's been a lot of conjecture about the performance of the power plants, like what kind of thrust we got, what kind of fuel burn we have, because that's critical to the operation of any airline or freighter company, for that matter of how much fuel we're gonna burn with x kind of load in it, and what's the range and all those kind of things. As you can imagine, if you're the analyst at the airline company, and you're trying to put that into your database and figure out what the cost of an airline ticket is, or what kind of profitability this airplane is going to be what routes you can fly it on, you have nothing to base that on, you just have no data without having that that's like the most crucial piece of data of all of it is engine performance. So you can get a lot of back and forth between buyers and producers of aircraft in that performance category definition. Because it makes a big difference. So if you don't have any numbers, and Boeing's not going to give you the numbers, then what's your What are you gonna do? You know, that's right, you can make as well, I'm not gonna buy until you give me the numbers. That's it. That's it. But even worse is that I'll go to the press and tell them that you're not producing numbers, so that every airline across the world knows that you're not producing numbers, which is bad, you know, no one wins in that situation. So that's where they're at right now. And I'm surprised that Boeing's letting that go on without providing some they have to know, right? They have

3:59to know by now. Thanks. All right,

4:01which is what everybody's saying is, well, you've flown the aircraft, you have to know You must be getting numbers on the engine performance, or is it? And why can't we see it as it is? So you're in any sort of, like, if you're buying a car, and it doesn't tell you I mean horsepower? It is what foot pounds of torque is not you kind of wonder like, Why are you hiding that? I mean, what's wrong with this car?

4:25When you worry about that, and the only reason you hide numbers? Yeah, the only reason you don't publish numbers if you're afraid they don't live up, right.

4:32So you got two options. You can lie about it or not, or withhold it and I guess Boeing deciding just to withhold it for now. Because it must not be what they expect it to be right. And Boeing on the honesty scale is being pressed to be honest about everything after the 737 issues on the map. So probably the best option is to say nothing as as coming. But you would think that there ought to be a lot of phone calls going back and forth between now airlines and And the triple seven staff to get that corrected. It's weird. Weird combative situation. So early in a program.

5:09Yeah. Well, moving on. Let's talk a little bit about Airbus. So Airbus corporate helicopters, they now have a 70% share, reporting from Ayane, online of the yachting market, which they talk about how this is a, it's a challenging market, but one that's been pretty resilient to the pandemic literature. Makes sense, right? So if you are wealthy enough to own a yacht, that you can land a helicopter on, you probably weren't hurt too badly from the pandemic. And well, of course, you know, these may be business owners, they may have taken a large hit or maybe had to shutter business. But I think the idea is that with the stock market being what it was a lot of, you know, model wealthy people put money in when it was down and made a boatload of money thereafter. So only a boatload. Yeah. Well, and it's it's interesting, this article talks about, you know, ultra wealthy people wanting to sneak away to their yacht and quarantine and yeah, you know, be away from big crowds, even as life is resuming or starting to resume as normal. Exactly. But is does it strike you as a pretty resilient market? I mean, do you feel like the luxury market in general is, is relatively resilient to these kind of these kind of, well, disruptions?

6:21It is it tends to be what you only time you see real trouble is on economic collapse collapses, like the 2008 in the US or across the world, actually. were sort of large yacht sales just collapsed. And then the helicopter market went with that everything caught I went with that on the on the housing market side. So you can you can, I think on some level trace aircraft sales with other sort of luxury item sales. Yep, big boats been another one of those items. So big boat sales are doing well. Airplane sales tend to be doing well. And it's it's funny that Airbus called out like, Where are the yacht company where the yacht helicopter company, we went 77 out of 10. yacht aircraft? That's us. So you're the one to come. We're the one that has the best aircraft to land on your yacht, which is a weird thing to think about. Because we were talking about the use of helicopters, like where are they being used right now? Well, where's a great place to sell the helicopters with someone who has cash who has cast and somebody with a yacht has cash. So that's a great place to sell a helicopter versus in a more competitive market, like on a training market or an oil rig market? those tend to be a little more cost conscientious, so to speak. So I'm sure I'm sure that the yacht helicopter market is a sweet profit margin market and you want to live in there if you can. But isn't it just a just a little bit odd and the way that Airbus sort of constructed that argument like, it's it's the argument of, well, we're the leader in that space, so everybody else doesn't matter should always come to us. Which is a great sales argument, by the way, like, if you don't know anything about helicopters. And you see that Yeah, well, I guess I call Airbus since they have 70% of the sales here. I'll call Airbus because they know what they're talking about. Yeah, it's it's a great marketing tool to pull that one off it but from a

8:27helicopter rich get richer? Well,

8:29it's sort of, I mean, sort of, right. If someone buys a helicopter, there's a lot of people making that helicopter. So you're taking that money and putting a lot of people to work, which is super awesome. I think the question, and this ties into the Airbus kind of stepping away from the retail market for a while and saying it's not ready yet. One of the easier time markets is going to be landing on your yacht. Come on,

8:55for sure. Right. Yeah.

8:56So Airbus is say saying that those aircraft are not ready for that yet. It's not ready for that. It's not ready for the for the big time. We're going to be okay, making helicopters for the next couple of years, at least

9:08one last piece of news today. And of course, this is tied to the aireon collapse, GE Aviation is no longer working on the infinity. So obviously,...

Will the 4-seat Voloconnect EVTOL change everything for Volocopter, as they moving into longer range flight prototypes? Beta Technologies got a big investment round from Fidelity and Amazon-what does this mean for the company's future? Plus, Allen talks electrical grounding; is Boeing in trouble with their latest 737 electrical problems?

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Transcript: EP54 - Voloconnect EVTOL, Beta Technologies Investment, Plus Boeing Grounding Issues

0:00This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy.

0:14You're listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. I'm Allen Hall. And here on struck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection.

0:33Alright, welcome back to the struck podcast. I'm your co host, Dan Blewett. On today's show, we're gonna catch up a little bit talk about some good growth Coronavirus News with quarantine free flights, from American to Italy. We'll talk a little bit about Airbus and Air France, standing, potentially standing trial over 2009 crash and a potential partnership between Rolls Royce and Boeing. In our engineering segment, we'll talk about grounding today, as it kind of relates to some of the new Boeing 737 issues which that plane remains embattled. And then lastly, bunch of E VTOL. News to catch up with some really interesting stuff from Volocopter. We'll talk battery tech a little bit re lilliam and Beta Technologies. So Alan, how you doing, sir? Hey, great, Dan, we're almost out of COVID in the United States. I know. The mask mandates have been lifted recently and will be lifted at the end of the month. So that's that's a really good sign. I hope our friends, especially our friends in Europe, and in India and South America

1:40can get to this point relatively soon. I know there's just a lot of a lot of Coronavirus going on around the world. And it's really serious in certain parts. So from the aviation community standpoint, it's a big problem.

1:54Travel is still going to be limited for the next several months easily. Yeah, well, and so, so much reporting on American Airlines, they're offering customers flights, quarantine free from JFK to Milan, and and from JFK to Rome. So yeah, basically, customers will have to provide proof of a negative COVID test and then also get a COVID test when they arrive. But after that, they can pretty much go about their merry way, which seems like a you know, big sort of breaking of the seal. Because international travel has been a big No, no, right? It has been it. But it's also really done a lot of damage to the economies that rely on vacation or some business travel. It's just been slammed, totally slammed for more than a year now. And it's it can't go on much longer without really having lasting lasting

2:46consequences. And so it's good that at least where we can do it. We should be starting to open up some of these routes. Obviously, having the COVID test makes infinite sense. Having been vaccinated, I had my second vaccination over the weekend. And that was an experience. But if we can do

3:07it little 16 hours of sickness.

3:09Oh, yeah, it was here. Now. It did. It really did. It really did. I felt like it felt like I was having the flu, every part of my body was achy, and tired. It was amazing how fast that reaction happened. But, hey, I wanted to go through that if I could travel again, or travel more, I've already traveled quite a bit. He already COVID times. But it's it's you know, always like super cautious about wherever you go. And rightly so me in the vaccine is not going to prevent you from catching it necessarily. But it'll just knock the symptoms way down. And hopefully, as we get through the summertime, more of this type of travel will happen. Yeah, and interesting, as a Rena article earlier about the Yankees and how they had a little COVID outbreak recently. And it was kind of exploring that idea that well, the vaccines are pretty effective. But even when they're not completely effective at preventing people from getting COVID because obviously, all the Yankees players were you know, vaccinated. Go, yeah, but nine, I guess nine got it. And seven were symptom free. So that seems like a pretty good result. Because I think that for a lot of us, the the day is just what everyone's worrying about, like, would you be that one person that really has lingering effects and, and obviously a lot of people lost their lives. So that's

4:29it, it's just like a normal sickness and you know, not too too bad, where it's going to really, you know, you could lose your life or be in the hospital or exactly long term effects. That's the big thing. So Right, right. Yeah. And that's where it gets back to normal life. If it really was just like a bout of the common cold or just something moderate, then, you know, that's humans have been dealing with that forever. But obviously, it was not that for so long. It was pretty scary, especially when people are still still dying as we learn more about it. Yeah, and I had traveled over the last

5:00week or so across the country on some business travel. And I was shocked at the number of people that were traveling. It was midweek

5:10in different different stops along the way from West Coast east coast. And it was amazing the number of people that were traveling and it's the level of of tension you could feel it at the gate was

5:24much, much, much less everywhere you were even in the restaurants and things are starting to open up again in the in the walkways and in the taxiways, all that stuff is open that was closed, for at least a year is starting to crack open again and which is a good sign. But I always feel he could feel the panic. Last summer when you're traveling. It was very serious. It was really serious travelers and everybody who has might have their P's and Q's the whole time. In this last time it was people going on vacation clearly going on vacation. clearly going to like some people are going to Vegas have a good time. So you saw a lot more general activity. It wasn't like a needed travel times. Things have changed the condition. The vaccines helped a lot. Alright, so moving on, we'll get your opinion here a recent article about Airbus and Air France, they're potentially going to be ordered to stand trial in a criminal sense over 2009 crash that 220 people lost their lives specifically related to freezing of was it pido tubes or Peto probes? Are they interchangeable? interchangeable? Pretty much today? Yeah.

6:35And so it sounds like they had icing issues. And it sounds like there were some service bulletins or mandates to swap those out. But yet, this issue still happened in the plane, I guess. What is it the nose got a little high during the during the flight and they stalled all in crashes? Yeah. fell out of those. Yeah.

6:57I guess the big question is why why a criminal complaint here rather than just a civil

7:04a civil one? Well, it's a it's it has to be related to specific French or European law. And in the United States, I think this would never get this far. There would be settlements and

7:17signing of documents to prevent future lawsuits. But in this particular case, I think because it was everything's internal to France, right. So you got Airbus and you got Air France and then you have a lot of French families that the flight was coming from Brazil, to France.

7:35And it Peto probes, most likely I Stover based on the data from the crash and all the reconstruction that had happened, airplane stalled fell about 40,000 feet into the ocean. And no one can figure out for the for a while, like what had happened. It's just so bizarre, but incidents have happened.

7:53The legal ramifications are odd in the sense that if you're trying to prove negligence, it's going to be hard to do that. Because the regulator's I'll allow the paedos to be changed over a period of time. You can't unless there's like something really, really severe happening. It's rare that iasa FAA Transport Canada just grounds an airplane and says you got to fix us like FAA did with the 737. That those situations are very rare. Usually, there's a timeframe if they have some sort of known issue, and it's not catastrophic in nature, to let you make those changes over time because airplanes don't need to be in service and all those kind of things. So there's an out for Air France and Airbus, which is that the regulators allow them to do this. And I'm sure that what they're going to point to now what happens in a French civil court Who the heck knows what's going to happen there. But if you're going to hold somebody culpable for that, then it's good. Most likely, it's going to be some engineer somewhere, unfortunately.

8:57And that's just a bad situation. Because when you start going after engineers who are doing at least theory are doing the right thing is

9:09it miss you know, intended to kill somebody clearly. Then you're citing intent to kill somebody or to kill a couple 100 people.

9:19That gets hard to prove in a courtroom realistically. But if they do find somebody guilty, every engineer that's working on Airbus, or Air France is going to be totally tight about what they're going to sign off on forever, because

9:35it isn't like they're making the decision in a vacuum. They're making a decision with all kinds of people who knew about it. There are probably hundreds of people who knew about it from from the lowest mechanic to the highest people in the corporations knew about it.

9:49It's an interesting concept, because back in the day, this was from a camera which book I was reading that if you built a bridge,...

The Aska Drive n Fly EVTOL is being billed as an air SUV, something you can own (for just below $800,000) and fly to the city and back. Is this realistic? Boeing was outpaced by Airbus in the Q1 aircraft deliveries--will this trend continue? Plus, we assess some EVTOL market projections out to 2035...are these analysts just guessing?

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

In this episode we discuss Boeing's new 737 MAX troubles - the FAA has grounded planes from 16 customers due to an electrical issue. We also dive into helicopter lightning protection and look into the safety records of rotocraft: just how safe are helicopters in 2021, and should we trust them in light of recent high profile crashes the likes of which took the life of Kobe Bryant and Olivier Dassault? Lastly, Wisk has released a white paper on the future of air taxis, using data from surveyed commuters. Does the autonomous air taxi really have a realistic chance of becoming reality? We discuss.

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

In this episode we discussed the new Horizon Cavorite X5 EVTOL design, FAA regulations on evacuations and middle seats due to COVID, Heart Aerospace's ES-19 electric turboprop plane, and SPAC news--are the EVTOL companies going public overvalued?

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Lilium, the EVTOL company now going public via SPAC Qell, has unveiled plans for a new 7-seat model of EVTOL aircraft. But, will this heavier model have a chance to fly when no company has demonstrated significant flight time with even a two-seat model? Plus, we discuss recent Boeing 737 MAX orders by Southwest (now confirmed), deliveries of 787s, the Rolls Royce UltraFan jet engine, and a unique EVTOL design called called Talyn that has an autonomous lifting craft separate from the main aircraft.

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Struck Aerospace Engineering Podcast EP50 - Boeing Orders Surge; Rolls Royce UltraFan Plus 7-Seat Lilium EVTOL?

In this special episode, Allen and Dan discuss aerospace engineering and the skills that are more important, relevant and evolving in 2021. As aircraft become more and more complex, work shifts increasingly online and remote, and companies push their employees to be more productive, what does the the modern aerospace engineer look like?

Watch this episode on YouTube here.

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

EP49 Transcript - What Skills Do Aerospace Engineers Need in 2021?

you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection all right welcome back to the struck podcast on today's episode we're going to have a little bit of a different format kind of do a Q&A dialogue with Allen about the state of aerospace engineering and engineering in general talk about jobs and education and some of the different skills that are really important especially now in 2020 as you know the landscape is changing and communication digitally and in person rapidly changing and so we'll kind of dive into that today so Allen let's start um you know you have just recently hired a new engineer to the team so let's start with some of the skills that you value today and then we'll kind of double back um through you know your education and some of those skills that are maybe more valuable when you were younger and uh you know a young blood engineer but let's let's talk about your your new hire and some of the things that you are looking for in an employee it is unique in the aerospace world when you're trying to bring somebody new on and we we are constantly looking for the best engineers we can find and so when we we come across one we tend to grab them and what do i mean by uh really good engineers what i mean by that is they have a couple of different skill sets uh what scott adams would call a talent stack so i want to steal that term but it's a talent stack and that talent stack is uh things that are developed uh usually outside the office place uh and or the office environment uh from what i've seen um it's a combination of one being able to work with others to play well on the playground right and that that you can relate to others that have uh you know have a little bit of fun but also be serious at the same time and uh negotiate right i think part of it's just a negotiation in engineering is a lot of negotiation a lot of times and being able to do that and on top of actually having some engineering skills having the the book knowledge that you need to have an engineering degree and to do it well on top of having the ability to turn a wrench and to understand what it means to turn a wrench or have not be willing be willing to get your hands dirty if needed those those skill sets really combine into what i always feel is a very useful versatile engineering person let me run with one of those for a second so we've talked about boeing a lot on the show and in the past boeing did a lot more of their manufacturing in-house right they produced much more of the entire aircraft themselves now speared air systems those you know huge sections of the fuselage and and and with airbus also not just boeing you know you're essentially getting huge pieces coming together to be assembled so i can imagine that if you're uh an engineer for boeing and now you've got to work with engineers from spirit and everything's got to be kosher everything's got to fit snugly together with these incredible tolerances that's where it seems like it you can't just be the engineer because i know engineers have you know my dad's an engineer they have the reputation sometimes of being you know just they're at their desk and they're really good at what they do but don't talk to them right that's sometimes the impression probably not fair certainly in many cases but um it seems like there's probably more collaboration than ever with companies starting to outsource some of and use more vendors and suppliers is that true it is it it does force the the tier one companies the boeings air buses of the world to be in some cases almost seen as a spec writer you're defining the operation of a system but the implementation of it happens down at a supplier and it it does sort of take you away from the hardware a little bit but it does put you closer to the certification work so it's a different sort of skill set there it does it has changed it quite a bit i would say it's changed quite a bit in the last 40-ish years maybe 50 years in terms of the engineers that were coming out of school um tend to get thrown on the assembly line for a while either or as a draftsman so they were doing a lot of drafting work and then that was translated into doing some assembly work working with the manufacturing floor to then once you get through this little apprentice stage then you were sort of brought up into the world of quote-unquote engineering where you're doing some analysis work and design work those that there was a normal progression in that in fact when uh my wife and i both started work at general electric years ago that's exactly how he designed it they designed a system where you would work in manufacturing for roughly six months you're working in design for six months you're working in program management for six months so you go through this sort of rotational program similar to what amazon is doing with their blue origin rocket ship program it's got the same sort of program set up because you just don't know you don't know what all that stuff is you don't know how how somebody manufactures anything until you actually do it and for some engineers they never have that opportunity they're just immediately brought into analysis design spec writing and they're not hardware people it's a big divide it is a big divide if you don't understand how the the parts are built or or what the what the constraints are in in a particular design to make determinant paper drawing or computer drawing into reality you're missing a whole lot about the process and missing a fun part of the process so you're definitely starting to see that dichotomy happen where you don't necessarily get the experience on the manufacturing floor or drafting making drawings you just don't have that it either is you're in analysis or you're a manufacturing engineer and never the two shall cross both are good you need both i mean you really do to be effective you just do well and obviously i'm not an engineer uh but when you're drawing all these things and you're making them in whether it's computer automated design or whatever you know software system of course back in the day i'm sure there was a lot of paper um but you're obviously drawing things that exist in real life so you're putting in a spec sheet or in a drawing a bolt that exists in real life i mean how much do you have to have familiarity with that specific bolt like for you with your radome designs you're constantly talking about it has to be a you know a quarter inch bolt it's got to be a number number four it's got to be this it's got to be that i mean how how often do you have to hold those in your hands to really know what you're drawing up i i think it helps a tremendous amount to know those things and oh the the engineers that have worked previously outside of aerospace can be really useful in that so if you've designed construction equipment or you've been in the automotive world or you've been in the tractor world or farm equipment world which is sort of the area of the world that i come from if you have those little skill sets you know what a quarter inch bolt is you know what a half inch bolt is you know what its yield is how much strength it has and there's different qualities of bolts that you can buy those are really useful skills if you're designing something in which the bolt matters right and cost matters also you can use a cheaper bolt in some cases right all those little nuances that come to engineering are big in terms of being a successful company if i buy the wrong bolt and the thing breaks i'm trouble if i buy a bolt that's way too expensive and it costs too much to produce i'm in trouble right so you it's hard to conceive of the all the little trade-offs that happen at such a micro level every day but they dramatically change the bottom line and i think watching it's it's going to be curious to watch here uh with the electric vertical takeoff and landing companies that are spooling up because they seem to be wanting to spool up people and are trying to hire people that are like senior people and at least at least that's what they're advertising right now so if you go on linkedin you see all these ads for the most senior person in the world that knows how to do this one particular thing that's great and you you need those people but you also need those people that are very skilled but maybe not as have as much experience uh that are in that learning process a little bit still because they're the ones that can really make or break you the the the people leading the the charge are are very important we got to go in this direction on this particular kind of design but the the implementation happens way down here at a much lower level and you can really make a breaker company at those lower level decisions because they accumulate over time and that's what your final product is is the accumulation of these little decisions that are happening at such a micro level that the management never sees it you just don't see it all they see is a dollar sign and a time to build at the end well those decisions were made months ago by someone who may or may not have their the adequate skill set to do it and that's it so it's just in this engineering discussion o

Ehang is the target of a class action lawsuit, claiming the company has misled shareholders--what will this mean for the Chinese EVTOL company? Boeing reports a significant increase in orders, reaching positive order flow for the first time since 2019. Southwest is nearing an order of 300 737 MAX aircraft, which is more good news for commercial air travel, and Honeywell reveals their new turbogenerator, which could have huge implications for EVTOLs needing to rely on more than just battery power. And speaking of battery power, can Lithium-Sulfur batteries make good on significant energy density promises?

Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverter strips. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Transcript: EP48 - Ehang Lawsuit; Boeing Orders Surge; Southwest Ready to Buy More 737 MAX Planes; Honeywell Turbogenerator

you're listening to the struck podcast i'm Dan Blewett i'm Allen Hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection

all right welcome back to the struck podcast i'm your co-host Dan Blewett on today's episode in our new segment we'll talk about Boeing has a net positive on their orders for the first time since 2019 southwest is looking to order 300 737 maxes which obviously ties into both and the code recovery which is great in our engineering segment we'll talk about honeywell they have a new turbo generator that can potentially power a lot of hybrid electric aircraft in the future which also runs on biofuel and then our evtol segment we're going to talk about ehang a new lawsuit was filed today against them we'll talk about the loyal wingman drone which is a boeing project out of australia and lastly we'll talk about lithium sulfur batteries and the implications they might have on the electric aircraft market so alan let's first talk about boeing this is good news they've got net positive orders since first time since 2019 and um it sounds like things are on the up and up yeah well at least in terms of 737 max sales they're going to be uh because there's just going to be a huge backlog of companies that were waiting for the aircraft to get quote unquote re-certified uh for use again so you're gonna see that airplane explode and they had a couple hundred sitting on the tarmac waiting to be sold since 2019 to early 2020 so it's it's there's going to be a huge surge of uh of sales that happen over the next year uh to to get that backlog into service which makes sense right i mean i don't know how our airbus is ever going to keep up with that because you just had those contained contained inventory that had that had been sold that you couldn't release and so now you can release it that's not you can't really compare boeing and airbus in that situation at all that's not fair that's fair yeah so it sounds like in february 2021 they booked 82 aircraft orders 27 kc-46s which was aircraft or air force order uh 14 747 maxes a 747-8 some 787 dreamliners 11 777 x's which went are going to singapore airlines so so yeah all all in all it sounds like you know the recovery is starting to shape up and obviously in the stock market and let's shift to south southwest here like southwest's uh stock is doing very well they're in the low 60s now um you know down i mean they were struggling in the summer right i mean that was a scary time warren buffett sold out a lot of his southwest stock so some pretty big recoveries and of course i'm not sure those are going to match like their revenues obviously but there's a lot of optimism right and so uh and with southwest they're just announced that they're close to an order it's not in the books yet for 300 737 maxes now do you feel like the public is going to understand this because the 737 max is still this embattled scary plane that people are probably rapidly forgetting about but still you know there's that public image of this is an unsafe plan that's a really good question because there's been so much news about it and because the name sticks it's just like uh you know if you say airbus a321 i don't think that sticks but that max marketing logo stuck so even though it's a dash 8-9 it's it's going to stick and i i i'm not sure how it's going to play out in the public perception of it because you know southwest does a pretty good job of you know here they're flying 737s you know that right every airplane on southwest is a 737. uh but you see a lot of dash 700s and 800s when the flight attendants get on the pa system and say hey we're flying in a in a max what does that mean i'm not sure that's how that's going to play out yet and i haven't seen any marketing on behalf of southwest that's trying to explain that they may need to it's they may need to do that yeah in this article by airlineratings.com um it says the southwest order whatever its size would be a massive boost for boeing and it comes as airlines report no negative feelings toward the max from passengers so it sounds like in in internal surveys or whatever people aren't really aren't really concerned about i'm a little shocked by that which does sound surprising right yeah it does sound surprising maybe because of the covet whenever no one's traveling that it's just falling off the radar screen in terms of news for a while there it seems like that's the only thing you're reading about the all the trouble that boeing was having in the boeing ceo leaving in the turmoil and going in front of congress and all that um maybe it's been enough time and time's gone on as society's in another place they haven't they're not thinking about it that's fascinating i would have thought they would have stuck a little bit longer but that's good because the max is a is a very good airplane it obviously is it's it's it had now double scrutiny went through certification once and then i went through certification a second time so to speak so probably the most regulated aircraft in american history is the 737 max should be in pretty good shape you think yeah it's kind of like if there's a attack or there's a shooting somewhere it's pretty inundated with policemen the next day right there's a lot of security there the next day so there's that but i i think there's also just you know you're an aviation you know lifer how many people actually even heard much about the boeing 737 stuff are cared for even a second you know like in the news cycle there's a lot of things that people it's just like maybe it's probably not as my point is it's probably not as sticky or as concerning as you think obviously this was big news but how many people are really like concerned about what aircraft they fly in or really give it a second thought when they finally get to the airport i think business travelers do i i think that one particular class of of a passenger the business travelers that do a lot of airplane travel they know what airplane they're on a lot of times and it's surprising uh what decisions they make and what airplanes they like to fly on happens all the time i like flying the embraer 190 because of xyz you do see people and business class people and people buying those kinds of tickets do make selections like that and they're a significant part of that revenue stream for an airline now it's been shut down for the last year so maybe that's why you're not seeing it so much because people on vacation don't really don't seem to care that much what airplane they're on they just know it's going from you know someplace cold to some place warm like florida that's what they know but the business traveler knows and that's so that's a segment that really hasn't come back alive yet so i think they still got to play that one out as the business um flyers start to pick up in the next six months and they may have a little more work to do than they think yeah one it's also not as prominent it's not like uber where you call an uber and it's like you're getting picked up in a honda civic right it's not it's not like this big button it's not like this really heavily touted thing when you book your like i booked a couple flights recently i don't know what uh what plane i'm going on for anyway really i could certainly find this but it wasn't it's not like thrown in your face like congratulations you just booked an airbus a220 it's like kind of i don't know like i i really don't know which ones i'm on for any of my three flights that i booked and every time i've booked a united flight i know what i'm on and i do i do select airplanes that i like to be on versus ones that i don't like to be on well the info is there but i'm just saying it's not it's not prominent it's not like a a main feature where i'm sure i can go back and figure it out in a second and i'm sure if i was thinking about it at the moment i would have seen it like when i was booking my seats i'm sure it's like this is a 737-8 aircraft check out you know sign up for receipt but again i i obviously we do this podcast together so i have a pretty high awareness of you know commercial air travel and the 737 but even then it just like wasn't a salient feature in my booking process it wasn't you know obvious where you can't miss it you know if you didn't know this information if you weren't seeking the information well guess what we're going to slap you in the face with it it certainly wasn't like that yeah i i agree with you but i do think there's a certain segment of the population that does watch it i remember uh traveling back and forth to ireland or northern ireland and you should be able to either fly on a 757 single isle boeing airplane or you could fly on a triple seven well the flight you want to pick there's a triple seven it's a lot more comfortable than the 757 and a lot of people have made that decision and so it does like i said that business traveler is very cognizant that particularly on long longer flights

LiquidPiston's unique rotary engines are gaining traction, as the Air Force has awarded them a new contract working in the hybrid propulsion space - what does this mean for the Company and the electric aircraft space? News has surfaced on the Boeing 777 Engine failure case, with the Pratt & Whitney engine suffering metal fatigue in fan blades; Allen explains what this will mean for the company moving forward. We also discuss Rolls Royce moving into the EVTOL space, Joby news, the NASA X-57 Maxwell and the tragic passing of Olivier Dassault.

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Lots of big news recently, as a United Airlines flight from Denver on a Boeing 777 had an engine catch fire; what was to blame? In EVTOL news, Allen and Dan discuss infrastructure of the future EVTOL and ESTOL market. The report by investor and short position holder Wolfpack Research tore Ehang's business apart, claiming lack of ability to produce the aircraft, lax security at their facility, improper revenue projections and more.

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