Wellington Airport welcomed the first electric flight to land on its runway this morning.
The two-seater light aircraft, owned and flown by the Christchurch-based company ElectricAir, will remain in the capital for a week for people to see what the future of air travel may look like.
Wellington Airport head of operations Matthew Palliser spoke to Corin Dann:
The Pipistrel Alpha Electro was the first battery-powered, emission-free plane to make the flight across the strait.
On Thursday morning pilot Gary Freedman had the jitters. Not because of the flight or the distance, but because ElectricAir was waiting on checks, weather windows and a potential Covid outbreak in the South Island.
"In this environment, the plan changes almost day by day," said Freedman who had been looking forward to the flight since it was first postponed last year.
"It's more symbolic to be honest. The plane can do that distance and more."
This is no Evel Knievel leap of faith but proof of the existing technology.
The small plane with a cruising speed of 150km/h isn't much faster than the Le Rhone Avro biplane that captain Euan Dickson used for the journey 100 years ago. But it's an exciting direction of travel.
Electric aircraft are something a lot of Kiwis have high hopes for. Not least, Sounds Air and Wellington Airport, which aim to electrify their operations across the link.
The flight coincided with the opening of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Replacing short-haul electric flights would be a huge climate goal for New Zealand. Even just across the strait.
"The Cook Strait is one of the reasons Kiwis fly so much," says Freedman. "We have one of the highest short-haul flights per capita anywhere in the world."
Building what he calls an "electric bridge" between the islands would be a great help in keeping essential emissions down.
Preparing to fly the same route from 2026 with electric passenger planes currently on order from Heart Aerospace, Sounds Air will be watching closely. The airline's chairman Rhyan Wardman said they were "committed to the advancement of electric flight in New Zealand."
"Sounds Air have been great," says Freedman. "They've been working with us on this, taking some of their pilots to see the plane and flying it."
While the Pipistrel light aircraft might not be capable of carrying more than two people, the trajectory of electric flight is only upwards. Wellington airport intends to have infrastructure for 19-seater electric passenger planes in five years' time.
ElectricAir, which runs flight school and training in electric aircraft, sees students increasingly looking to get experience in the Pipistrel Alpha Electro.
"A lot of the pilots that we've been training over the past year know that it's something they will need on their CV," says freedman.
One hundred and one years ago the plane of Euan Dickson made the 78km flight in a cruisey time of four and a half hours. He couldn't have imagined that 100 years later you could fly from Wellington to Sydney in less time, or that someone would be getting ready to repeat his journey in an electric aircraft.
"When they did it they were trying to prove it was doable," says Freedman. "They wanted to show if they could do it carrying post, parcels maybe even people."
Just imagine where we'll be in another hundred.
