EP58 – Hermeus Mach 5 a Reality? Vertical Aerospace Orders Surge and Are Used Planes a Thing?
In this episode we discuss plane discounts - are used Airbus A330s a viable plane in today's market? The Hermeus team is trying to get a Mach 5 plane to market within five years, and is working with the Air Force on a Mach 5 Air Force One - is this realistic? Plus, Vertical Aerospace is going public with a SPAC merger, and has taken on a significant number of orders lately - are they surging ahead in the EVTOL race, despite no flight demonstrations to date? Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! TRANSCRIPT EP58 - Hermeus Mach 5 a Reality? Vertical Aerospace Orders Surge and Are Used Planes a Thing? 0:00This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy. You're listening to the stroke podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. 0:18I'm Allen Hall. 0:19And here on struck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection. Alright, welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast. I'm your co host, Dan Blewett. On today's episode, we're going to talk about used planes, how long do they last? And what's the market like for older Airbus and Boeing aircraft? And is this going to hurt their sales of new aircraft, and our engineering segment we'll talk about Hermeus. They are looking to create a Mach 5 aircraft and they are working in conjunction with the Air Force to develop the next Air Force One Mach addition. So we'll talk about some of the engineering challenges that will come out of them. And then there are a VTOL segment lots on Vertical Aerospace today, which they've been in the news quite a bit. 2 billion worth of orders from Avalon, which entails quite a bit of quite a lot that gets 500 plane orders. American Airlines has also put an order for 250 planes, Virgin Atlantic 150. So there's a lot going on here. And it looks like they're gonna go public with SPAC merger. So lots in the in the news about Vertical Aerospace, and they admittedly have a beautiful looking prototype. I'm into it. But we'll see what Alan has to say. So first, Alan, let's chat about USD plane. So especially popular right now is the Airbus a 330, with smaller airlines who want to save money or startups, and they can be reduced, sometimes up to close to 50% of their sticker price. What are like what's the deal with the a 330? And why is it so it's such an attractive use plane and what what kind of routes can the a 330 fly? 2:07Well, it's a bigger airplane. So it's a twin aisle airplane. So it's it's made for longer haul routes. Similar to what like a triple seven would do. And the but that airplane is much older in terms of when it was developed. The problem with anything as twin owl right now is that there's not a lot of long route flights going on anywhere in the world. Forget about you know, United States, Europe is really hard you still now so there's there's just a depressed market. There's a lot of airplanes, twin, all airplanes that are parked right now. And obviously, the newest ones are going to retain most of their value, but the older ones are gonna have a hard time especially older designs are gonna have a hard time maintaining their value through this just because they're older designs, you can buy a new one for also a discounted or newer one for a discounted price. Why wouldn't I do that? You totally what. And I think a lot of times in these down situations and COVID has been one big downer for the airline industry, airplane models just disappear for the most part or they are they shift where their main focus is they get because they're just less expensive to operate, they can be operated by a lot of airlines that couldn't otherwise afford them. And so you'll you'll see,