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JoinedJanuary 24, 2022
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• As Senior Editor, Elan spearheads The Air Current’s coverage of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, along with a focus on emerging sustainable technologies.
• Jon Ostrower is Editor-in-chief of The Air Current, where he leads coverage of the global aerospace and aviation industries.
The industrial giant Textron has the attributes – favorable and unfavorable – of having been around for a long time. It doesn’t have to loudly hype its technological and product viability to excite investors, it doesn’t have to stand up an organization from nothing, and it has a balance sheet and engineering bench that would make any newcomer envious. It also is weighed down by the institutional inertia, silos and competing internal priorities and executive attention spans that come with a sprawling aerospace conglomerate, antithetical to the fast-moving and creative startups.
Joby Aviation's lead test aircraft crashed on Feb. 16, kicking off an NTSB investigation that could have implications for the aggressive timeline the company has embraced to be the first eVTOL company to fly passengers in 2024.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson has resigned. The U.S.'s top aviation regulator was about half way though his five year term. His dealings with Boeing will be the defining characteristic of his time at the agency.
The UAE offered its preliminary report on the bizarre circumstances around Emirates 231. The brief report confirms much of The Air Current's reporting on the Dec. 20 botched takeoff out of Dubai.
Reuters took a close look at Qatar Airways and claims its pilots are making around crew scheduling in the wake of the pandemic, which significantly resized the airline. The result is a broader discussion around fatigue and the risk of cockpit mistakes that should serve as context given other recent incidents, including Emirates 231. Boeing is betting on Wisk to be its pathfinder to autonomy, so how does the eVTOL entrant plan to do it? United Airlines formally launched its own flight academy, giving aspiring pilots a private certificate and a leg up to an eventual job flying with the airline. Yet, there are still very real obstructions that are clogging the pipeline of pilots.
For Wisk and its major backers, it’s all or nothing — and if the startup can win a fully-autonomous certification, it offers Boeing a bridge to adapt those technologies to its next-generation airliners, a goal it has eyed since at least 2017.
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