A local aviation company completed its first landing of an electric-hybrid aircraft at Long Beach Airport on Thursday.
Dubbed the “Electric EEL,” the experimental plane created by Long Beach-based Ampaire landed at the city airport following an 85-mile, 35-minute flight from the company’s hangar in Camarillo, Calif.
In a news release, company CEO Kevin Noertker said the landing served as a “significant leap” in its goal to bring to market a hybrid-electric propulsion system that expels considerably less emissions than traditional aircraft.
“It’s crucial that new technology airplanes achieve the ability to safely operate in airspace associated with major airports,” Noertker said. “This we have demonstrated many times before, but never so close to home. This milestone speaks to the progress we’re making in building trust in cleaner, more efficient, and accessible air travel.”
Part of Ampaire’s business model is to offer a system that can be retrofitted onto existing planes; Ampaire’s Electric EEL, for example, is a hybrid version of the existing Cessna Skymaster.
This allows for an incremental transition, as opposed to a dramatic shift, from fossil fuel-dependent fleets to cleaner models in a way that is faster and cheaper than building new planes.
This comes nearly five months after the company moved its headquarters from Hawthorne to Long Beach. With the company still needing federal certification, Noertker hopes to have a hybrid system on the market by 2026.
The company joins an upswell in development by start-ups and large-scale aviation giants like Airbus. It also coincides with a mounting public awareness to the effects of climate change, and the industries that fuel it.
Transportation is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., with aircraft accounting for nearly a tenth of that, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
And if Thursday’s flight — which charted across Los Angeles County — confirmed anything, it’s that time is of the essence.
“These regions, recently devastated by (the) Los Angeles wildfires, serve as a stark reminder of the urgent need to address the climate crisis,” Ampaire said in its news release. “The flight highlights the critical importance of sustainable technologies like hybrid electric aviation in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating environmental damage.”