Scottish airline company Loganair reckons it is set to “deliver the world’s first commercial hydrogen-fuel aircraft route”, flying “from its Orkney base to the Scottish mainland… in five years”.

Now Orkney is only about 35km from mainland Scotland, so these aren’t going to be particular long-distance flights (or big planes). Nonetheless, the company sees this initial ambition as “a test to explore how hydrogen fuel infrastructure would be rolled out across aircraft and airports in Scotland”.

To get to that point, Loganair “has identified various short-haul routes from Orkney which are perfect for hydrogen-fuelled services” and “is linking with airports and fuel developers” to move things forward.

It’s important to bear in mind that it also reckons that “it is in the best interest of the company and the environment to keep a broad range of options open”, with hydrogen just one of these. So, it also has “a partnership with Heart Aerospace on a hybrid-electric propelled aircraft” and is “embracing the challenge to meet the SAF (sustainable aviation fuels) mandate”.

The importance of policies such as the latter in near-term, larger-scale aviation decarbonisation has become much starker this week. That’s on the back of news that Airbus is “delaying plans to develop commercial hydrogen-powered aircraft by 2035”. It blames “slower-than-expected technological advancements and infrastructure struggles”.

Readers with good memories will recall that Airbus “announced its ZEROe hydrogen programme in 2020 when it revealed three concept designs” for hydrogen-powered aircraft. Now however, it reckons “that the necessary technology for commercial hydrogen flight is lagging five to 10 years behind schedule to meet the 2035 target”.

While it still claims hydrogen “has the potential to be a transformative energy source for aviation”, developing a whole ecosystem – “including infrastructure, production, distribution and regulatory frameworks” – has (quelle surprise!) turned out to be “a huge challenge requiring global collaboration and investment”.

Overcoming such challenges by focusing on synthetic or ‘e-fuels’ created from hydrogen, which can ‘drop-in’ to existing infrastructure, is thus proving to be a growing source of interest.