Milestone
This involves moving all promising propulsion concepts from the lab to a full-system demonstration. This means building and successfully ground-testing complete hydrogen powertrain systems (both combustion and hydrogen fuel cells) and hybrid powertrain systems (e.g., SAF & electric battery) to prove their fundamental viability before first flight.
Failure to validate these on the ground means you cannot safely proceed to flight testing. This would halt the R&D pipeline, making it impossible to select the "winning" technologies needed for the Medium-Term certification, causing private financing to pull out.
Scenario
Optimising together
Context Factor
A fully developed, certified, and deployed ecosystem of net-zero technologies, from new propulsion to full autonomy.
Timeline
Short term
PESTEL
Establish 'regulatory sandboxes' to accelerate certification of new technologies.
This requires key regulators (e.g., EASA, FAA) to create temporary, monitored pathways for innovation. This allows innovators to co-develop safety cases in a live environment, such as in a designated trans-Atlantic corridor for testing autonomous cargo flights.
Read moreSecure initial investments to build competitive, liberalized net-zero markets.
This action involves creating the financial architecture for the transition. It requires governments to create large-scale public funds to provide first-loss capital, which "de-risks" the sector enough to attract massive private investment.
Read moreAchieve TRL 9 flight-proven status for key net-zero propulsion systems.
This is the "first flight" and "flight-proven" stage, moving from ground-test (Short Term) to repeated, successful mission operations. It involves integrating the proven propulsion systems (e.g., hydrogen-combustion, electric-hybrid) onto test aircraft and flying them in a live environment to achieve flight-proven status (TRL 9).
Read moreEstablish global 'living labs' to co-create new technologies with citizens.
This requires a large-scale, transparent public engagement and education campaign. It must proactively address public concerns and build consensus around the safety of high-impact technologies, such as the risks of on-airport hydrogen storage.
Read more"In the smaller classes, alternative energy storage (batteries, liquid hydrogen) and propulsion systems (electric motors, fuel cells, power distribution systems) need to be developed and matured, so that they can subsequently be scaled up to larger amounts of energy and power." (Destination 2050 (2025), p. 51)
"Research efforts should focus on highly efficient aircraft and propulsion systems, innovative wing and fuselage configurations, electrification and hybridisation, as well as collaborative platforms and alternative fuels (including hydrogen and SAF)." (Destination 2050 (2025), p. 14)