ELISE and Heart Aerospace complete electric ground support procedure tests
Swedish startup Heart Aerospace has joined forces with Swedish airlines and the country’s airport operator to conduct ground handling procedure tests for electric aircraft.
Undertaken as part of Swedish research project ELISE (funded by the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova), this phase of the project focused on creating a full-scale demonstrator of Heart’s regional ES-30 aircraft, which was publicly unveiled today.
The Heart Experimental 1 (HX-1) demonstrator was used to test various ground support procedures at Gothenburg’s Säve airport including verification and testing of charging procedures, evaluation of charging routines, onboarding and offboarding procedures, and ground support and maintenance routines.
“Through the ELISE programme, SAS is gaining valuable insights into electric aviation,” said head of sustainability at SAS Ann-Sofie Hörlin. “This keeps us ahead of market trends and helps us shape the future of electric aircraft”. Chief sustainability officer at Braathens regional airlines Lars Resare added that collaborating with like-minded stakeholders and sharing the knowledge gained would help bring hybrid-electric and fully-electric aircraft technologies to market more quickly.
“It is very gratifying that Swedavia [owner and operator of 10 Swedish airports]… can contribute with our broad collective knowledge and competence regarding battery-powered electric aviation and its infrastructural and operational consequences on airports,” concluded John Nilsson, senior strategist responsible for electric and hydrogen aircraft at Swedavia.
