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Innovation can happend in places where FAA has no say. There are a lot of countries using short distance flights where electric airplanes would drive down cost
by silvestrov 3y ago
Innovation can happend in places where FAA has no say. There are a lot of countries using short distance flights where electric airplanes would drive down costs a lot.
E.g. Scotland, some intercity flights in Europe and between a lot of small islands such as Sint Maarten.
When this happends, the FAA will have to follow.
- cstross 3y agoShort inter-city distances over land run into competition from high speed rail. Which I know is not a thing in the Americas, but is all over Europe and can compete with turboprop airliners on point-to-point time. (Remember, railway stations are almost all in the centre of the departure/arrival city and there's no security theatre to delay your boarding: also, service frequency on some high speed inter-city routes is as high as one departure every fifteen minutes, utterly unlike Amtrak.) Scotland isn't really a market for short distance electric flights unless you're thinking of the Highlands and Islands, where less than 10% of the population is scattered across crinkle-cut fjords. France/Netherlands to Sint Maarten/St. Martin is, IIRC, served by wide-body airliners because it's both legally part of France itself (at least the St. Martin half of the island) and it's a significant tourist resort. And if you think the EU and UK have laxer safety/regulatory standards than the FAA, you might want to re-think your position ...