Well, the data we do have is that the flight was just under 30 minutes and very likely under 100 miles.

From the Wikipedia on airline fuel efficiency:

The worst-performing flights are short trips of from 500 to 1500 kilometers because the fuel used for takeoff is relatively large compared to the amount expended in the cruise segment, and because less fuel-efficient regional jets are typically used on shorter flights.

In the example values table, the most efficient plane for a 560km trip burns 0.92 kg of fuel per km, so doing some rough math and assuming the electric plane travelled 100 miles, that would be roughly 148kg of fuel, or 50 gallons (190L).

At current jet fuel prices ( $3.76/gallon ) that's about $188 US in jet fuel as a rough estimate. It's unclear if the test flight went up to full altitude or if the plane was at full weight, so a fair comparison might have used even half as much jet fuel.

Edit: From some of the other comments, it seems like they might have only considered flight time as cruising time, not takeoff and landing, so my numbers will be quite far off if that's the case. My gut feeling is that this is probably the case, because this seems like too big a difference otherwise.

$5 for 30 minutes in the air. pick any speed you want. it doesn't matter. avgas and jet fuel don't compete with $5.

The site for the plane manufacturers says they have a max range of 125 miles.

So this is practically useless for flights. It's faster to just drive 125 miles in an EV.

Ticket prices will in fact go up because they had to spend money on these new planes.

How would they ever recoup their cost? Do you even capitalism bro? (/s)

Even if they don't make it, the whole fact that the aviation industry goes less CO2 intensive would be a good win.

Question is, are they actually gonna use them now?

If there are savings, it would make it in customer's pockets. Aviation is incredibly competitive

I would, however, bet against them ever achieving that savings. Maybe they can find a battery-electric hybrid configuration that shaves off a percent or two, but I find even that unlikely

I fucking hate everyone and would love to subject you fucks to 4g of pain taking off with a stupid catapult system. Nice math.

One important caveat to this. It costs less than 17 cents to generate 1 kwh. Closer to 3 cents really. But that's the cost of making the electricity, getting that electricity to a house or charger or what have you costs more. Since energy is a for profit industry they tack all the logistics costs to the client buying the electricity.

So your math is spot on but I fear the amount of markup on the electricity will be massive especially since it's for a business let alone an airline.

Since a plane requires the most thrust at takeoff, you could use ground-based catapults to get the plane to takeoff speed (or faster even) and then you could carry smaller batteries and propelling machinery.

Don't you dare talk about catapulting using electric technologies in America though. Steam only! 🇺🇸🗽🦅🏈

A plane should still be capable of unassisted taking off and landing for emergencies, imo.

Since a plane requires the most thrust at takeoff, you could use ground-based

Actually dragging (or wheeling in) a wire or having a wire car supplying the plane with electricity during takeoff would work too.

I think the only realistic use case is going to be short trips. For long range offsetting the carbon for jet fuel just makes more sense.

But really small personal vehicles could be interesting. There is the Pivotal BlackFly which can VTOL and uses less electricity than a big electric car - and it needs to roads. So for commuting this could actually work to save on infrastructure.

For extra fun, you could have landing planes snag a wire and use their momentum to accelerate a plane taking off.

What about Flintstones style breaks, where everyone's legs stick out under the plane and they need to use them to stop?

Sure, it wouldn't be effective, but one or two of these new flights being on the news and global emissions would be down even farther than with your plan.

This plane can't carry passengers. All the useful load is taxen up by batteries. It's the fundamental issue with all-electric aviation

It will be too hard to time landings and take offs at small ports, but if you replace this with a massive flywheel you can have gearing to both spin it up on landings and draw from it to launch.

Wouldn't work Militarized though because you wouldn't be able to refuel it mid flight.

I was about to crunch the numbers to check for myself, thanks for doing it, you did a great job.

Amazes me how they made it work considering the amount of arcane shit it takes to make jet engines work. Of course it is possible since electric motors are torque monsters, but it still must've taken insane efforts to make it work.

I wonder if we'll see these flying anytime soon or if they'll get shot down by the fossil fuel i industry just like everything else that is amazing

Yeah the problem is they also don't tell us the load during the flight. From the lift equation (let's be hand wavey) if they're a similar size to a regional jet (same planform area) your heavy lift is better driven by speed than lifting coefficient. Of course, it's hard to go fast with electric props, so I wonder if a safe ceiling is probably 400Kt 300Kt?

Gives a nice range of you know... 40 to 200 150 miles.

Edit:

No way. The speed record for a prop aircraft currently stands at about 300Kt. If we use that generously our new ceiling is lower.

Because they didn't. And anyone that is capable of critical thought can easily take the few numbers they provide in the article and do some simple calculations.

They claim the motors pull more than 1mw of power. So using 1 mw for 30 minutes is 500kWh. That means they paid 1 cent per kWh. (Spoiler. They dont)

And nowhere, does it say the plane weighted 25000 pounds. It says it "can exceed" 25000 pounds. But by no means does that mean that's what it weighted in this test.

The most likely scenario is that the plane was bare minimum rather than maximum. I doubt even passenger seats were installed.

There are also flights where this could be used as fully electric right now, or very soon if they increase range a bit. If you fly from Tallinn to anywhere via Finnair, you go through Helsinki, that's like a 30 minute flight. And the reason you don't just drive to Helsinki is that you'd have to take the ferry which costs more money, takes over an hour and the Helsinki airport isn't that close to the port.

Similarly, you can fly from Tallinn to the two bigger islands here in Estonia, very short flights versus like a 3 or 4 hour bus ride involving a ferry. 30 and 40 minute flights with the current 30-40 person planes that company uses.

This plane is a piblicity stunt and will never be a viable product (the company itself said it is not meant for commercial production)

This "jet" has a lower max speed than a Cessna 150, a service ceiling of 2,000 AGL - far less than any commercial aircraft. It weighs 25,000 pounds with no passengers or cargo, almost certainly it's max weight. They can't even fit a 2nd pilot

They do not disclose how much energy was actually used, just a vague "$5" figure and a listed max power of 1MW

It's just a marketing ploy and you fell for it

Us??

Dude, I'd take short hop flights all the time if they end up being that environmentally friendly.