EP83 – A Supersonic EVTOL? And, is the EHang 216 Ready for Certification?
The Ehang 216 may be certified in a few months, according to new reports. Is this realistic? Plus, is the idea of a supersonic EVTOL feasible or even remotely reasonable? We also discuss the current pilot shortage in the US, the Jetson One sales numbers, Archer news and more. [powerpress Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. 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 welcome back to the Struck airspace engineering podcast i'm your co-host Dan Blewett on today's show got a great lineup first we'll talk about the rather rather desperate pilot shortage that's now gripping uh the u.s and also globally we'll talk about rolls-royce they've been testing one of their electric generators now exceeding one megawatt output which is insane we'll talk about uh hydrogen powered airliners the uk has revealed a plan that they think they can make a long-haul airliner work we'll see if alan agrees we'll also chat a little bit through elon musk's views on the matter obviously he has strong views on electric and hydrogen in the future in general and his are a little bit controversial when it comes to hydrogen power in our EVTOL segment we'll talk a little bit more about elon musk we'll talk about archer ehang jetson one uh which their sort of hobbyist uh aircraft have pretty much sold out by this point and a little uh story about apple car engineers and how they're starting to flee the nearly three trillion dollar company so alan let's start with this pilot shortage i struggle to understand these things a little bit obviously there's shortages of workers everywhere but the world hasn't i mean the world has changed but where did all the people go alan why do we have such a pilot shortage it seems like you know two years ago life was relatively normal obviously covid was a big deal and still is but how could we be desperate that many pilots at this point it doesn't seem to add up to me well when the when covet hit there was a lot of furloughs and pilots got laid off and in that interim because it was long enough it's been a year and a half two years going on two years now that pilots are educated people they can they can find jobs in other industries and they did and now that uh some of them are being recalled back they they don't want to go back in particular maybe they found a better paying job i mean they found a job with better better hours or less stress or a variety of variables there and i there if you look at the tsa numbers we're at about 85 90 of 2019 levels so the the flights at least the flights in the united states are pretty close to where we were and that means there's a lot of airplanes flying internally into the united states overseas not so much still and those tend to be kind of the smaller airplanes the 737s airbus a320s 319s uh the 737 maxes are going to be big in that space and so the most senior people don't tend to fly those airplanes it tends to be the the the towards the youngers younger ages that are flying those airplanes and i think they have other opportunities and and now that uh the the airlines are looking to expand and we have all the evital pilots uber flight kind of pilots that are going to be needed there's going to be a big demand on pilots and i i don't know if we have the infrastructure to support it because 50 years ago most pilots came out of the military i think now it's not nearly that many come out of the maritime like they're coming out of places like embry riddle and in schools like that or flight schools and they're just earning their wings over time by flying freight and cargo and all those different kind of airline airplane flights so you're just getting a different different graphic coming into the marketplace uh and the requirements for hours have gone up the fa jumped the number of hours required so he c...