A New Role For The Airport

Abstract

For the past decades, aviation has had a fair amount of incremental innovations, such as improved traffic management, optimization in conventional aviation technology and process developments. With the global sustainability ambitions, new technologies and innovations have been in development by a vast amount of parties. Electric aviation is one of these innovations within the developing sustainable aviation industry. Therefore, the scope of the project revolves around electric aviation, executed in collaboration with Royal Schiphol Group (RSG) and its Innovation Hub department. The Innovation Hub's main role within RSG is to provide research and set in motion radical innovations to be implemented, of which Sustainable Aviation. The research questions within the scope are therefore defined as follows: What are the current developments in the electric aviation industry? And how can RSG facilitate the transition towards sustainable aviation within the aviation industry?Geels' (2002) system transition theory serves as the foundation for the research approach, structuring the thesis in two phases accordingly to the research questions which define the scope; research and concept phase (figure 0). Within the research phase, the landscape drivers have been analysed, depicting a sustainability pull through global sustainability ambitions and a technology push through the developments in the battery technology. With these developments, multiple niche innovations have emerged over the past years, consequently making electric aviation feasible for specific use cases. The most prominent parties developing these niche innovations are Heart Aerospace, developing a 19 passenger electric aircraft with a range of 400 km, and Eviation Alice, developing a 9 passenger electric aircraft with a range of 815 km. The socio-technical (ST) system transition towards sustainable aviation is the goal of electric aviation. This transition is enabled by the interaction of technology and people. Based on this, the landscape cultural trends have been analysed and used as a basis for the comparison of the use of modalities within the mobility industry. Thus, deriving a potential ideal use case for electric aviation of 300-400 km, potentially increasing in range depending on the battery developments in the future. The current expectation is that batteries increase in energy density from 260 Wh/kg to 600 Wh/kg by the end of the decade. This range is the foundation for the entry use case, the concept of the thesis. The range of 300-400 km is one of six metrics used to develop the entry use case. The others are passenger substitution potential, network potential, location in the Netherlands, innovation resources and viral factor. In line with RSG its values, network potential has been the deciding factors when choosing the entry use case, with other potential entry use cases available when altering the deciding factor. This entry use case is between Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, as this has both a high passenger substitution potential with a critical strategic motive. Scandinavia aims to implement electric aviation on their airports, enabling a higher certainty and willingness to collaborate towards the development and implementation of electric aviation. With this entry use case, several bottlenecks emerge. As a pioneer in the sustainable aviation industry, RSG has a seven step plan to overcome these bottlenecks, of which creating a coalition of industry stakeholders collaborating in researching and developing the electric aviation industry. With this actionable plan, RSG has the ability to accelerate the transition towards a sustainable aviation industry, as well as progress in the research for the implementation of electric aviation.