The Allplane Podcast

The decarbonization of the aviation industry will require huge amounts of investment. If we focus on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) alone, the amount of capex that will be required is staggering. Take Europe, for example, that will need over 100 new SAF production plants by 2030 if the aviation industry is to meet the EU’s ambitious SAF adoption plans. No wonder, then, that some of the most promi...

Right as the commercial aviation industry gears up for the 2024 edition of the Farnborough Air Show, I got on Zoom with Jon Sindreu, one of the top journalists out there that knows the industry best. Perhaps because, in addition to his strong focus on aviation, Jon covers also range of sectors through the popular “Heard on the Streat” section on the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), he is able to offer a...

As Europe is trying to get people off planes and into trains out of environmental concerns, Dr. Klaus Radermacher stands out as a contrarian voice. We are calculating it wrong!…says this engineer and consultant, who, in the last few years has taken a keen interest in the topic of sustainable mobility. Is the train really a better alternative to the plane? Which mode of transportation is most effic...

Sustainability has become a central topic in aviation, but are airlines prepared for this conversation? Elizabeth Maclean and Mike Evans are the co-founders of Herdwick Communications, a consultancy firm that advises airlines all over the world. With Elizabeth and Mike we speak about the reputation crisis and public relations storm that the aviation industry is facing in the face of climate change...

Landor is, possibly, the creative agency that has designed the most iconic brands in aviation. British Airways, Alitalia, Singapore Airlines and Etihad are just a few of the big names of the airline industry that have entrusted their public identity to Landor’s creative minds. On this episode of the podcast we speak with Ryan Frost, Executive Creative Director at Landor, about the attributes of a...

Our guest in this episode is Billy Thalheimer, founder and CEO of REGENT, a startup based in Rhode Island developing a wing-in-ground vehicle that will make it possible to fly fast and sustainably between coastal cities before the end of this decade. A wing-in-ground vehicle (WiG) is a type of craft that flies just a few meters above the surface of water making use of a draft-reducing aerodynamica...

Is the air cargo market ripe for its own technology revolution? Aleksey Matyushev and his team at Natilus are certainly doing their bit to make it happen. A graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Aleksey has been working at the cutting edge of aerospace technology for quite some time, both on civilian and military projects. He is the founder and CEO of Natilus, a Californian startup tha...

Charles Everett is the Director of Aviation at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a public organization set up by these two states in order to manage key pieces of infrastructure, including the ports, some tunnels and roads and, importantly for this episode of the podcast, New York’s airport system. More than 144 million passengers pass every year through the airports under the respons...

Giulio Ranucci is the Head of Innovation at Aeroporti di Roma (AdR), the company managing Rome’s two airports, Fiumicino (FCO) and Ciampino (CIA), with nearly 45 million annual passengers combined. What makes Giulio’s work at the helm of AdR’s innovation arm particularly interesting, is the very active role that the Italian airport operator is playing in fostering technology innovation in the airp...

Richard Gaona is one of the key players in the global executive aviation industry. The once president of Airbus’ Executive Aircraft division is currently leading one of the most unique operators in the highly sophisticated world of private aviation. Richard is the President and CEO of Comlux, a company like no other. The uniqueness of Comlux is not due to the fact that it operates at the highest e...

Jay Sorensen is one of the world’s top experts in airline ancillaries. Every year, Jay’s firm, IdeaWorksCompany, produces a comprehensive report about the state of airline ancillaries, a piece of work that has become the reference in this field, the Yearbook of Ancillary Revenue. As someone that tried to read IdeaWork’s ancillaries yearbook as soon as it comes out, I was keen to have Jay on the po...

Addison Ferrell is Director, Infrastructure and Head of Americas at Skyports, one of the world’s leading vertiport developers. Vertiports will be an essential element of the upcoming advanced air mobility revolution. Will they be more like airports or like metro stations? What sort of experience can we expect to have there are travellers? What are the barriers of entry in this sector? These are al...

The seaplane industry could not remain off trend. Electrification is driving a wave of innovation in aviation and George Alafinov , the scion of a family of seaplane designers, is making sure it does not skip one of the oldest branches of the industry. True, seaplanes may have fallen out of fashion in the post-war years. The advent of the jet era, the availability of airports on land and the maint...

Marc Piette is the founder and CEO of Xwing, a California-based company that is developing a system that allows aircraft to fly fully autonomously, from gate to gate without human intervention. This may sounds like science-fiction to some, but it is certainly not. Already back in 2021, Xwing demonstrated this technology by successfully completing one of such autonomous flights. This is a potential...

Things we talk about in this episode: Jenny’s professional background What is Cranfield Aerospace Solutions What is the relationship between Cranfield Aerospace Solutions and Cranfield University Why Cranfield Aerospace Solutions has pivoted towards the search for sustainable technologies in aviation The Britten-Norman deal Project Fresson The role of Cranfield Aerospace Solutions in the UK’s sust...

As used as I am in reviewing all sorts of innovative ideas in aviation, the concept that Magpie Aviation presented a few weeks ago really caught my eye. Is this even possible? This was my first reaction when learning about the system to get an electric aircraft to tow, mid-air, a passenger aircraft to its destination that the guys at Magpie have devised. Fortunately, I had met Magpie’s Damon Vande...

This year’s edition of EBACE was all about sustainability, or at least that’s what the program of activities focused on. The executive aviation industry is well aware of how it is being increasingly perceived by the public opinion in a context of climate alarm and, believe it or not, it is taking the matter very seriously. Interestingly, and perhaps counterintuitively, there seem to be strong syne...

TNMT is the research and analysis arm of Lufthansa Innovation Hub, which is, in turn, the innovation arm of the large German airline group. If you are into aviation tech, TNMT’s newsletter is a must. I have been a subscriber for quite some time and have even collaborated, through AeroTime, in one of its editions. This is why I had long wanted to invite TNMT’s head of research, Ivan Terekhov, here...

Mikhail Kokorich is a serial entrepreneur operating at the technology frontier of aerospace. Following a string of successful business launches in areas such as satellite technology, his latest venture, Swiss-based Destinus is developing an hypersonic aircraft capable of linking different continents at speeds five times faster than sound. This may sound outlandish, but there is currently a wave of...

When it comes to the passenger experience and the product most airlines offer to their passengers, Jeff O’Neill has pretty strong opinions. Not for nothing, Jeff, who was already on this podcast back in 2020, is the founder of Zephyr Aircraft Seat and has been patiently working to bring to fruition what he sees as the future of the Premium Economy class. The Zephyr seat is as revolutionary as it l...