While the commercial news was quiet, the airshow was far from it, with crowds everywhere.

On Wednesday, Sustainable aviation startup ZeroAvia revealed that it will be partnering with Dutch flag carrier KLM to attempt a test flight. This would be a flight using liquid hydrogen as fuel between two cities.

As for the timing for when such a test flight could take place, ZeroAvia founder and CEO Valery Miftakhov said that the partners are initially looking at 2026 at the latest.

Asked what kind of aircraft would be used for the test, Miftakhov said that he could not specify but that it would be similar in size to the ATR 72 or DeHaveland Canada DHC-8.

At the moment, ZeroAvia is steadily making progress, having successfully produced multiple turboprop engine variants. These have been fitted to aircraft such as the DHC-8 and Dornier 228.

Thai Airways Extends Agreement to Maintain Boeing 777 Fleet

Thai Airways signed a deal with General Electric (GE Aerospace) to continue to maintain its Boeing 777 fleet. The service provided by GE Aerospace is dubbed the “TrueChoice” service, which includes maintaining, repairing, and overhauling the Thai Airways GE90 fleet.

Thai Airways remains a loyal customer of GE Aerospace, having used the GEnx on its Boeing 787 fleet expansion and equipping its fleet of Airbus A321neos with CFM LEAP engines.

• READ MORE: Farnborough Airshow Kicks Off With a Handful of Orders

The Thai flag carrier’s CEO, Chai Eamsiri, said that GE Aerospace “continues to prove itself as the right maintenance provider for our GE90 engines. This agreement extension ensures comprehensive coverage for our engines well into the future.”

Airbus Makes First Aircraft Lessor Partnership of ZEROe Program

Airbus has revealed that it will be partnering with Avolon in order to study Hydrogen-powered aircraft and reduce emissions in the aviation industry. This is the first partnership with an active lessor in the project’s history.

The European aviation manufacturer’s environmentally friendly project includes four concept aircraft, with all four carrying under 200 passengers. Its main goal is to make the first hydrogen-powered aircraft by 2035 and then start selling these commercially.

At the moment, progress is heavily underway, with other partners, including London Gatwick Airport (EGKK) for infrastructure, easyJet, and Air Products, the world’s biggest supplier of hydrogen.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

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European regional airline KLM Cityhopper, a division of KLM, announced last week that it is now employing an in-house developed virtual reality system to train pilots on the Embraer 175 and 190 aircraft. KLM said in a news release that Cityhopper “is the first airline to integrate VR into its pilot training for Embraer aircraft.” The company wants “to investigate the capabilities of VR in an effort to respond more flexibly to pilots’ differing training needs.”

KLM said, “Virtual reality makes training more accessible. It is on-demand and site-independent – pilots don’t have to be in a classroom or a simulator at a certain time. What’s more, it invites them to explore, something they can do safely in a virtual environment,” says Sebastian Gerkens, Senior Instructor Embraer at KLM Cityhopper. “VR allows pilots to familiarize themselves with the cockpit in advance, so that they make more effective use of their simulator time.” The company believes the use of VR will also generate cost savings because it makes pilot scheduling more flexible and reduces the number of external suppliers.

“The VR training courses for the Embraer 175 and 190 were developed by KLM’s own VR experts in cooperation with KLM Cityhopper.” Training consists of three applications, all part of the Type Rating Course. The virtual cockpit module puts the pilot into the cockpit through an interactive, computer-generated image of the control panels. The pilot also watches a 360-degree POV video of a flight as if they were sitting on the cockpit jump seat. Finally there’s the virtual walkaround both through and around the aircraft, composed of 360-degree static photographs.

Werner Soeteman, manager of the VR Centre Of Excellence at KLM IT said, “To produce the 360-degree video and photographs, one of our VR engineers sat in the cockpit operating an advanced 360-degree camera during a flight, in close cooperation with the KLM Cityhopper pilots. Our developers haven’t the faintest idea how an Embraer works, although they’ve certainly learned a lot.”

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The national flag carrier for the Netherlands, KLM, has flown that flag now for 100 years, not only with a royal blessing, but also a number of other firsts and records to its credit.

KLM celebrates 100 years of flying under the same business name, “Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij voor Nederland en Koloniën,” or Royal Dutch Airlines for the Netherlands and Colonies. The Dutch airline launched flights in May 1920 with a leased De Havilland DH 16, then began again in April 1921 with its own Fokker F-IIs and F-IIIs.

The company set a record in 1934 with the Douglas DC-2—Fokker held the reassembly designation for Douglas aircraft based on the friendship between Tony Fokker and Donald Douglas, so the tie with the Netherlands for Douglas was strong. The airline’s flagship DC-2 Uiver (which means “stork” in Dutch) joined the MacRobertson Air Race, a contest flight between London, England, and Melbourne, Australia, in October 1934, and it took first place in the restricted category—those aircraft carrying passengers and cargo—and second overall. This win was particularly sweet, as Uiver had become lost in a thunderstorm off the coast, and landed on a muddy racecourse near Albury, NSW.

KLM now flies the latest Boeing, Embraer, and Airbus designs. The company is marking the anniversary with a series of celebrations, and in a uniquely Dutch manner: It has created a Delftware miniature house to commemorate the occasion. A video pitting KLM’s DC-2 days against those on board today’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner can be found here.

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