The advent of electric aircraft is well under way with Europe playing a lead role. The region's largest budget airline easy- Jet is pioneering efforts to electrify commercial aviation and has revealed plans to establish electric "flyways" on key short-haul routes in Europe from 2030. easyJet's Oct. 29 announcement came shortly after Europe's busiest airport, London's Heathrow, launched a competition to accelerate the development and uptake of hybrid-electric aircraft, offering to waive a year's worth of landing fees worth nearly ￡1 million ($1.3 million) as a prize for the first regular electric service. Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye launched the competition at the Oct. 15 BusinessGreen Leaders Summit in London. "We championed carbon-neutral growth… [now] the next frontier is zero-carbon flying, and I hope this prize will help to make it a reality at Heathrow by 2030," he said. easyJet itself is hoping to offer electric flights from Heathrow once the third runway is built. Meanwhile European firms Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Siemens are already working together on a hybrid-electric plane, converting one of the four engines on a British Aerospace 146 passenger aircraft to electric powered by batteries weighing two metric tons. Earlier this year, Norway's state-run airport operator Avinor said it wanted all domestic flights and services under 90-minutes to neighboring Scandinavian countries to be all-electric by 2040 (JFI Jan.29'18).
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