Budget carrier EasyJet is partnering with JetZero to offer operational insights to help guide the development of the US start-up’s blended-wing-body aircraft.
Revealed on 4 September, the collaboration sees EasyJet become the second of JetZero’s airline partners – its first in Europe – following a similar pact with Alaska Airlines disclosed in August.
Unlike Alaska, however, EasyJet has not invested in the company.
JetZero touts the blended-wing-body configuration as potentially offering a fuel-burn saving of up to 50% against traditional tube-and-wing designs when using conventional turbofan engines.
But in addition to those efficiency gains, EasyJet sees the large fuselage as offering the necessary dimensions to in future incorporate a hydrogen propulsion system, notably the larger fuel tanks that will be required.
“Another advantage of the blended-wing airframe is that the novel shape potentially enables hydrogen storage and it’s agnostic to future propulsion systems,” said EasyJet chief operating officer David Morgan at a sustainability event at Cranfield University in the UK.
Tom O’Leary, chief executive of JetZero, says the design would give carriers like EasyJet “the opportunity to use a slightly bigger plane that takes hydrogen and takes the same amount of passenger capacity that is flown today”, while meeting their capacity and operational requirements.
JetZero is aiming for service entry of its first product, an aircraft of around 250 seats, in around 2030.
Although EasyJet has not yet invested in JetZero, the carrier’s chief executive Johan Lundgren says its operational experience offers enormous value to developers.
“When you are looking at how we are going to get into zero-emission technologies, the best thing we can do right now is to actually help everybody, to give our contribution to the OEMs, to say that… it’s got to be affordable and it’s got to work in our business model.”
EasyJet will join JetZero’s Airline Working Group, a body that the start-up hopes will eventually incorporate around a dozen carriers; its first meeting is due to take place later this year, says O’Leary.
