Friday, March 3, 2023 will go down in history. On this day that Universal Hydrogen flew a 40-passenger regional airliner using hydrogen fuel cell propulsion. The plane, named Lightning McClean, took off from Grant County International Airport and flew for 15 minutes. The flight was the first of a two-year flight test campaign that is expected to culminate in 2025 with the entry into service of ATR 72 regional aircraft converted to run on hydrogen. Representatives from Amelia, the European launch customer for hydrogen aircraft, were on hand to witness the historic flight.
Alain Regourd, founder of Amelia, commented: "We congratulate Universal Hydrogen for this major breakthrough in aviation! It paves the way for an indispensable evolution in the near future: creating zero-emission regional routes."
The partnership between the French airline Amelia and the American Universal Hydrogen started back in February 2022. On that date, the two entities signed a memorandum of understanding providing for:
An innovation supported by Amelia, Universal Hydrogen's first airline customer in France.
Amelia is the first European airline to tackle the decarbonization of the French regional sky. The partnership between Universal Hydrogen and Amelia is one of the actions taken by the airline to achieve the "fly net zero" objective, which the airline has taken part in by joining the IATA alongside the largest airlines.
Amelia wishes, through short and medium term actions, to commit to developing sustainable solutions to significantly reduce its carbon footprint. In addition to hydrogen-powered aircraft, it is essential to consider the full spectrum of solutions, such as sustainable fuels or the optimization of our operations through the solution developed by Thales, Flight Footprint.
These commitments and partnerships make Amelia one of the most advanced regional airlines in Europe in terms of energy transition.Alongside its industrial peers, our airline is supporting the most relevant initiatives to meet the challenge of the ecological transition together and to enable the aircraft to remain a vector of cultural and economic development.
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