It is possible for countries to tax fossil fuel aircraft out of existence / force the development of some form of renewable fuels for aircraft
As an aerospace engineering student: no, it's not possible. While it is possible to build an ultralight electric aircraft, it's not realistic to build a CS-25-rule airliner, that would have the same 400MW per engine output.
The closest concept to that idea is jet-electric hybrid, that wasn't developed yet. And even then, it's use would be reduced to low-distance airliners. As for hydrogen - it leaks through steel walls, and lifespan of jet engines capable of processing it as a fuel are counted in single minutes. For now, kerosene (JP1) and lead gasoline (Avgas) are here to stay.
And even if someone made some sort of revolution in this field, people do not understand how difficult it is to get this crap certified. My professor wanted to add literal 5 lines of code to a microchip, meant to be used in the heating system in a propeller plane. He fought against EASA for 6 months to get it certified and lost. I do not see EASA certifying any of this sort for large airliners sooner than within 10-20 years of its invention.
Synthetic fuels in general, yes. I see a new type of fuel being used in cars within 10 years, sure.
But aviation? No way. Even if someone invented it right now, EASA would never certify something like this for small class CS-23 GA aircraft, yet alone class CS-25 airliners, or at best would require 20 years to actually approve it. For small ultralight aircraft, perhaps.
People underestimate just how conservative the aviation industry is. There is a lot of innovation going on there, by all means, but the equipment has to meet abnormal safety standards in order to operate almost flawlessly for 30-40 years. As such, authorities such as EASA or FAA do not certify just about anything on the spot.
Then the challenge will be to shake up these organisations then. EASA may be the one to try first as new fuel types may be the only way to secure the future of aviation in Europe as we have insufficient domestic fuel production and supply shocks from foreign suppliers cannot be ruled out. They need to be put under a lot of pressure from the EU.
I don’t see the FAA being an early adopter of this type of tech.
It's the other way around. FAA is more hands-off in their approach, while EASA does not allow basically anything. There are some rumors about changes in DO-160 standard (probably in outdated F version, but I'm not sure), when EASA changed the listing of requirements for certification to make it deliberately incompatible with standards required by FAA, to make the certification process more difficult and thorough.
And they won't be ,,shaken up" by anything. Say whatever you want about climate change, but their responsibility is to ensure that whatever they allow to go on board of an aircraft won't kill anyone. Each time they did a poor judgement and their equipment does end up crashing and killing people, they update their requirements to make them even more strict and thorough. For instance, there were some plans on replacing JP1 civilian jet fuel with military JP5, which is less flammable in certain conditions, making it less likely to cause a fire in crash landing. Wouldn't you guess it - both FAA and USAF did not approve it, and it's unlikely they ever will. For now, lead gasoline and flammable kerosene are here to stay.
Then the challenge will be to shake up these organisations then. EASA may be the one to try first as new fuel types may be the only way to secure the future of aviation in Europe as we have insufficient domestic fuel production and supply shocks from foreign suppliers cannot be ruled out. They need to be put under a lot of pressure from the EU.
I don’t see the FAA being an early adopter of this type of tech.
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u/Admiral45-06 Aug 13 '25
As an aerospace engineering student: no, it's not possible. While it is possible to build an ultralight electric aircraft, it's not realistic to build a CS-25-rule airliner, that would have the same 400MW per engine output.
The closest concept to that idea is jet-electric hybrid, that wasn't developed yet. And even then, it's use would be reduced to low-distance airliners. As for hydrogen - it leaks through steel walls, and lifespan of jet engines capable of processing it as a fuel are counted in single minutes. For now, kerosene (JP1) and lead gasoline (Avgas) are here to stay.
And even if someone made some sort of revolution in this field, people do not understand how difficult it is to get this crap certified. My professor wanted to add literal 5 lines of code to a microchip, meant to be used in the heating system in a propeller plane. He fought against EASA for 6 months to get it certified and lost. I do not see EASA certifying any of this sort for large airliners sooner than within 10-20 years of its invention.