Industry Updates for Clients & Friends of Boyd Group International

June 7, 2024

In This T&G:

• The AAM Category. New Entrant Might Obsolete The Competition
• DOT EAS Award Further Isolates Northern Maine
• The T&G Banner Program Expands

T&G Sponsor

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A New AAM Competitor That Really Isn't.

Enhances An Existing Transportation Channel, Without The AAM Battery Baggage.

Summary: Mesa Air Group has invested in a new aviation entrant that can leapfrog the daunting issues facing most AAM entrants. And, facts be known, with a lot less negative environmental impact.

Finally. A Player In The eVTOL Game That Is Techno-ready. Actually, It’s Not In The Game At All. It appears to be ahead of it.

The advanced air mobility (AAM) concept – which has exciting potential, albeit maybe not as extensive as some predict – has had one fatal flaw, at least so far.

One word, Benjamin. Batteries.

Let’s get real and toss some raindrops on this trendy AAM parade. The technology is not there, yet. The supply chains are not secure. The production of batteries is largely a human rights abomination. The enormous pre-use and post-use environmental damage is ignored. As a matter of fact, all of this is tacitly verboten to mention.

Damn The Lack of Technology! Full Speed Ahead! It is astounding how the glitter of the potential AAM applications has morphed into a giant sandstorm of misinformation, amateur planning, and in some cases outright nonsense. (Yes. I am aware that this is heresy. Truth normally is in the face of trendy dogma.)

Not one major article in mainline media, as far as I can find, has ever made mention or has related to the fact that both NASA and Tecnam have shelved their prototype electric airliners. This is due to insufficient battery economics and in the case of NASA, also due to safety concerns.

Solution: Use Current Technology To Leapfrog The Future. News Flash. Mesa Air Group has ordered up to 100 AAM-related 6-seat aircraft under development by a company called XTI Aerospace. Mesa has also reportedly invested in the company, too.

Everybody out of the pool. This more than raises eyebrows. Mesa’s CEO, Johnathan Ornstein, is not known for being swept up with touchy-feely trendy programs. An independent thinker, not a follower.

And it appears that this trait is in play with his company’s investment in XTI. Their Tri-Fan 600 aircraft under development looks not much different from some of the other planned AAM aircraft. Reportedly, it is 6-place. It has VTOL capability.

But raising eyebrows is the tentative performance projections. Like, cruising speed of over 300 miles per hour. Ceiling of over 25,000 feet. Range of 600 miles for VTOL operations, and longer when traditional runways are used.

This is nothing vaguely close to what's being planned by entities like Joby and Archer and others.

This Might Make Some Current AAM Programs Already Obsolete. The impact of this design may have more market consequences than just being another airplane.

Compare and contrast with some of the other eVTOL entrants. Most are very short haul, some under 100 miles as they schlep huge battery packs along. Most are smaller. Most have severe performance limitations. All are represented as models for entirely new market applications, with the assumptions (no research needed) that there will be demand.

That means all these other AAM programs are joined at the wingbox with a whole laundry list of pertinent battery-related and CFR safety-related issues that at this time are giant brick walls to overcome.

But the Tri-Fan 600 isn’t battery-powered. It will be pushed through the sky with traditional turbo shaft motors, operated with (naturally) sustainably sourced jet fuel. The company’s vision is that the aircraft will be converted to electric power when the technology improves. Yes, when it improves.

In the meantime, the Tri-Fan 600 can take to the skies with little or none of the airport infrastructure that is needed to support electric aircraft.

And, in politically-incorrect fact, this initial version of the Tri-Fan will be demonstrably more environmentally-positive than other AAM platforms. Just do an honest check of the process of getting a battery into one of these machines, and it's obvious.

Textron Bell: Get Nervous. Hypothetically, the capabilities of this aircraft directly threaten whole sections of the helicopter industry. If the projections are right, and this Tri-Fan concept is successful, our friends at Textron Bell have some thinking to do. It could make obsolete entire fleets of current-design rotor craft.

Because of the eVTOL performance, combined with the speed and range envisioned, the proposed Tri-Fan will better perform in an enormous range of applications now exclusively the realm of helicopters. Plus, the range and speed and VTOL capabilities can threaten fleets of GA turboprops.

It’s All Just On Paper. For Now. Okay, Enough. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

This machine has a long way to go before getting airborne. Lots of money needed. Lots of challenges with a complex tilt-fan wing, plus a fan in the rear fuselage. Then there are little considerations such as ultimate production costs, supply chain issues, and operational costs. No guarantees.

But there is one clear advantage: this airplane concept is not living in the artificial bubble of dependence of battery production, supply chain and performance fantasies.

But the most cogent point is that the Tri-Fan aircraft is being developed to move a current air transportation channel ahead – that being what helicopters are doing today – instead of betting the farm on finding whole new applications that will need to adjust to fit the limitations of electric eVTOL technology and assume there is a consumer market.

Prediction: Watch this company. From a design and market perspective, it is eons ahead of the usual suspects in the eVTOL rodeo.

Because it isn’t in that rodeo. It’s in reality.

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Disclaimer. Boyd Group International has no business or commercial relationships with either Mesa or XTI Aerospace.

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More Evidence That The Essential Air Service Program Is Stuck In The 1980s.

Summary: The DOT just awarded JetBlue the EAS designation for Presque Isle, Maine. Here's a prime example of how communities are misled into accepting a "flight" instead of air access. But that's part of the completely out-of-date EAS program. With just one flight a day, Presque Isle will be now more isolated than any time in its history.

The DOT has awarded the Essential Air Service contract for Presque Isle, Maine to JetBlue.

Celebrate, all you folks in the County, as the region is called! You’ll have jet service again, which disappeared more than 40 years ago. And it’s to Boston, which the citizenry seemed to think was the O&D destination of choice.

But, alas, don’t break out the bubbly just yet.   

It’s just one – count it, one – flight per day. And it’s on an airline that doesn’t focus on connectivity, particularly to the maybe two dozen of the destinations that JetBlue serves only once or twice a day from Boston. Getting from the world to Presque Isle is going to be more constricted than ever.

A lot more so than the current 2x per day United Express service over United’s global hub at Newark. On 50-seat jets, it garnered about 33 passengers per flight. Wow! That’ll be nearly a 70% load factor on a JetBlue E190!

That’s if all the current traffic can be captured on one airplane. Maybe if the jet service will stimulate travel. If all the flow traffic now on United (about 80% of the traffic now) can be retained going through an airport (Boston) where B6 doesn’t operate a connecting operation.

A lot of “ifs.” Or, in the light of reality, not so many.

Not to mention that the only alternative is Bangor – 2.5 hours south, and a lot of that travel isn’t even on an Interstate. Presque Isle is isolated – and this grand EAS award will just make it more so.

This is one of the most inept awards the DOT could have made. Award-winning dimbulb. One that assures that “the County” will be more isolated than at any time in its history. In the past, there was substantial military and related traffic. But with the demise of Loring Air Force Base, that’s gone.

It’s not about JetBlue – their job is to make money with their fleet, and that’s a slam-dunk with a single round trip on a 330-mile route. It’s all about a community getting tossed down the economic ceramic fixture with the assumption that just having a flight at the gate is “air service.”

Take a look at what a single B6 flight a day can connect to at Boston, regardless of time of day. It’s paltry.

It is the responsibility of the DOT and anyone else involved to assure that EAS communities are fully aware that a “flight” by itself is not “air service.” It is their responsibility to assure that the community understands that access to and from the rest of the globe is what the local economy needs.

Didn’t happen here. They got pandered.

Great work, DOT. It brings to the fore once again the points made by Bill Swelbar in regard to the mire that the EAS program has descended into.

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