Despite a steep dip in revenues and little prospect of a meaningful recovery in its core air transport market, Airbus remains committed to its goal of bringing a hydrogen-powered airliner into commercial service. At a February 18 press conference to announce predictably downbeat year-end results for 2020, the European aerospace group’s CEO Guillaume Faury said it is working with a five-year timeframe to mature the technologies to support this plan.
Reporters quizzed Faury as to why Airbus is prioritizing hydrogen in its plans to improve the environmental sustainability of aviation when Boeing appears to view this as a distant prospect that is decades away from reality. “We must be careful with the ‘this will never work’ attitude, which has already proven to be wrong in so many industries,” Faury responded. “Fly-by-wire [flight controls] were seen as too risky 30 years ago and today you are not a serious company without this technology. If you can’t forecast the future you need to shape it. Hydrogen has great potential; it will come and we want to be at the forefront of it.”
