Why is a 50 seater trying ti compete with 737s when 737s have 120-150 pax capacity. It seems like you should compete with ER175s and other regional jets instead. If you’re aiming to compete for thin MH routes then wouldn’t slots at airports be an issue for such thin routes?
The lowest hanging fruit is the current 50-80 seat turboprop market. Next would be the regional jet market and lastly we want to capture a sizeable portion of the single -aisle market. The reason we want to compete with/capture traffic served by 737s and the like is that the market is enormous - we are estimating $1.7T over the next 20 years if we were to replace single-aisle with our 50-seat, SA-1. The reason that we believe we could compete is because we believe that we could bring the CASM of the 50-seater down to be on par with a 737, and combined with the emission reduction we think that this is compelling offer for airlines.
Our aim is not to have to compete with 737s at airports that are slot constrained but to make use of the 100s of underutilised airports across America. By bringing down the CASM of a 50 seater, we believe that this would increase the passenger traffic too and from those airport and make the currently thin routes more profitable.
I see, that makes sense. There's plenty of airlines like Ryan Air and Allegient who operate thin routes to secondary airports. A 50 seater seems perfect for operators who specialize in thin routes. How ironic if budget airlines beat traditional airlines in becoming carbon neeutral.
The air needed for the chemical reaction is pretty small, but we will also be drawing in some air for cooling and that will be around the same order of air that is used by a turbine engine. We will not have an APU per se, but we will have a small amount of battery to start the propulsion system and this can provide power to the aircraft systems for some time. We can also start up the fuel cells if need be to supply extra power, without turning the electric motor and propellers.
