B1 · Intermediate
13 min
technologyaviationenergyenvironmentbusiness
El Avión del Futuro: Crisis, Combustible y los Cielos de Europa
The Plane of the Future: Crisis, Fuel, and Europe's Skies
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So Lufthansa this week said it's cutting twenty thousand short-haul flights across Europe this summer.
Twenty thousand.
Because fuel prices, driven by the Iran war, have made those routes unprofitable.
Bueno, veinte mil vuelos es un número muy grande.
Well, twenty thousand flights is a very large number.
Pero la verdad es que esta noticia no me sorprendió mucho.
But honestly, this news didn't surprise me much.
Los vuelos cortos en Europa ya tenían muchos problemas económicos antes de la guerra.
Short-haul flights in Europe already had a lot of economic problems before the war.
Right.
And Lufthansa was pretty blunt about it.
They used the word 'unprofitable.' Which is airline-speak for: we were already barely making money on these routes, and now we're losing it.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Mira, un vuelo de Berlín a Múnich, por ejemplo, siempre fue muy competitivo con el tren.
Look, a flight from Berlin to Munich, for example, was always very competitive with the train.
Ahora, con el combustible tan caro, es casi imposible ganar dinero.
Now, with fuel so expensive, it's almost impossible to make money.
Here's what gets me, though.
The Iran war fuel crisis is a shock, yes.
But it's also, in a strange way, accelerating a conversation that was already happening about the technology of short-haul aviation.
About whether we need a fundamentally different kind of plane.
A ver, sí.
Well, yes.
Hay muchas empresas que trabajan en aviones eléctricos y aviones de hidrógeno.
There are many companies working on electric planes and hydrogen planes.
Pero estos aviones todavía no están listos para vuelos comerciales grandes.
But these planes are not yet ready for large commercial flights.
Es un problema de tecnología, no de dinero solamente.
It's a technology problem, not just a money problem.
So let's back up for a second.
Because I think to understand why this moment matters, you have to understand what jet fuel actually is, and why it's so hard to replace.
Bueno, el combustible para aviones, que se llama queroseno, tiene mucha energía en muy poco peso.
Well, jet fuel, which is called kerosene, has a lot of energy in very little weight.
Y el peso es muy importante en un avión.
And weight is very important in a plane.
Las baterías eléctricas tienen mucha menos energía por kilo que el queroseno.
Electric batteries have much less energy per kilogram than kerosene.
That's the core engineering problem.
The energy density.
A lithium battery that could power a 737 across Europe would weigh so much the plane couldn't get off the ground.
It's not a small gap, it's a chasm.
Sí, pero para vuelos muy cortos, de treinta o cuarenta minutos, los aviones eléctricos ya existen.
Yes, but for very short flights, thirty or forty minutes, electric planes already exist.
La empresa sueca Heart Aerospace, por ejemplo, tiene un avión pequeño que puede llevar treinta pasajeros.
The Swedish company Heart Aerospace, for example, has a small plane that can carry thirty passengers.
Es real.
It's real.
Thirty passengers.
Which is great for, say, flying between Stockholm and a small island.
But Lufthansa's Frankfurt to Madrid route carries a hundred and eighty people.
Different problem entirely.
Claro.
Of course.
Y por eso muchas personas hablan del hidrógeno como la solución para vuelos medianos.
And that's why many people talk about hydrogen as the solution for medium-haul flights.
El hidrógeno tiene mucha energía y no produce carbono.
Hydrogen has a lot of energy and produces no carbon.
Pero el problema es que necesitas mucho espacio para guardarlo en el avión.
But the problem is that you need a lot of space to store it on the plane.
I mean, Airbus has been working on hydrogen aircraft for years.
Their ZEROe project.
They were talking about having a hydrogen commercial plane by 2035.
But I've been watching that deadline quietly slide.
Sí, la verdad es que Airbus tuvo problemas con ese proyecto.
Yes, truthfully Airbus had problems with that project.
En 2024 cambiaron sus planes y dijeron que el año 2035 era muy optimista.
In 2024 they changed their plans and said 2035 was very optimistic.
Ahora hablan de 2040 o más tarde.
Now they're talking about 2040 or later.
La tecnología es difícil.
The technology is hard.
The extraordinary thing is that aviation is, in a way, the hardest sector to decarbonize.
Harder than cars, harder than shipping, arguably harder than steel.
Because physics just doesn't cooperate with you.
Mira, pero hay otra solución que ya existe hoy: el combustible sostenible de aviación, que se llama SAF en inglés.
Look, but there's another solution that already exists today: sustainable aviation fuel, called SAF in English.
Este combustible es similar al queroseno pero viene de plantas o de residuos, no del petróleo.
This fuel is similar to kerosene but comes from plants or waste, not from oil.
Right, SAF.
And the European Union actually has mandates now.
Airlines operating in Europe have to blend a certain percentage of SAF into their fuel.
Two percent now, rising to seventy percent by 2050.
Which sounds ambitious until you ask: where does all that SAF come from?
Es que ese es el problema grande.
That's the big problem.
El SAF cuesta entre tres y cinco veces más que el queroseno normal.
SAF costs between three and five times more than regular kerosene.
Y no hay suficiente producción en el mundo para todos los aviones que vuelan ahora mismo.
And there isn't enough production in the world for all the planes flying right now.
So here's the irony.
The war drives up the price of conventional fuel.
SAF, which was always expensive, starts to look relatively less crazy.
And suddenly companies that were building SAF production facilities look like they made a smart bet.
Bueno, sí, hay algo de verdad en eso.
Well, yes, there's some truth in that.
Cuando el precio del queroseno normal sube mucho, la diferencia con el SAF es menor.
When the price of regular kerosene rises a lot, the gap with SAF becomes smaller.
Y eso hace que más compañías piensen en invertir en SAF.
And that makes more companies think about investing in SAF.
I covered an energy summit in Doha back in, I think, 2019.
And I remember talking to an executive from one of the Gulf carriers who said, look, the day kerosene hits a certain price threshold, the whole SAF economics flip.
He seemed very confident about when that would happen.
A ver, los ejecutivos de las aerolíneas siempre son optimistas en los congresos.
Well, airline executives are always optimistic at conferences.
Pero en este caso, la guerra de Irán hizo lo que ese ejecutivo esperaba, mucho antes de lo que pensaba.
But in this case, the Iran war did what that executive was expecting, much sooner than he thought.
Let's talk about the historical dimension here for a moment.
Because short-haul aviation in Europe has a very specific history.
These routes didn't really exist at this scale until deregulation in the 1990s.
Ryanair, easyJet, that whole wave.
Sí, exactamente.
Yes, exactly.
Antes de los años noventa, volar en Europa era muy caro.
Before the nineties, flying in Europe was very expensive.
Era para personas ricas.
It was for rich people.
Cuando llegaron las aerolíneas baratas, millones de personas empezaron a viajar por primera vez en avión.
When the cheap airlines arrived, millions of people started flying for the first time.
Fue una revolución.
It was a revolution.
And it changed Europe socially, not just economically.
Young people could move to other countries easily, seasonal workers could follow jobs, families could live apart and still see each other.
The cheap flight became a kind of social infrastructure.
La verdad es que sí.
Honestly, yes.
Yo conozco a muchos españoles que trabajan en Alemania o en Suecia y vuelven a casa cada dos o tres meses.
I know many Spaniards who work in Germany or Sweden and come home every two or three months.
Eso es posible porque los vuelos eran baratos.
That's possible because flights were cheap.
Si los vuelos desaparecen o cuestan mucho más, esas personas tienen un problema real.
If those flights disappear or cost much more, those people have a real problem.
Which brings us back to the technology question.
Because the train is the obvious answer, right?
High-speed rail.
Europe's been investing in it.
But, look, the infrastructure is nowhere near complete enough to absorb twenty thousand cancelled flights.
No, no, espera.
No, no, wait.
El tren de alta velocidad en Europa es muy bueno en algunos países, como Francia o España.
High-speed rail in Europe is very good in some countries, like France or Spain.
Pero entre países, todavía hay muchos problemas: diferentes sistemas técnicos, precios muy altos, y el tiempo de viaje es demasiado largo para muchas rutas.
But between countries, there are still many problems: different technical systems, very high prices, and travel times are too long for many routes.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
I've taken the train from Paris to Madrid.
It took, I think, about nine hours with the connection.
A flight is two hours fifteen.
That gap doesn't close with good intentions.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y por eso la tecnología de la aviación es tan importante ahora.
And that's why aviation technology is so important now.
Si no puedes reemplazar el avión con el tren en muchas rutas, tienes que hacer el avión más limpio y más barato de operar.
If you can't replace the plane with the train on many routes, you have to make the plane cleaner and cheaper to operate.
No hay otra opción.
There's no other option.
So what does the realistic technology landscape actually look like right now?
I mean, setting aside the optimistic press releases.
What's actually in development that has a plausible path to commercial service?
Bueno, para vuelos muy cortos, menos de cuatrocientos kilómetros, los aviones eléctricos son posibles en diez años, quizás menos.
Well, for very short flights, less than four hundred kilometres, electric planes are possible in ten years, maybe less.
Empresas como Eviation, con su avión Alice, ya hicieron vuelos de prueba en Estados Unidos.
Companies like Eviation, with their Alice aircraft, already did test flights in the United States.
The Alice.
Right.
Nine passengers.
Pretty small.
But it flew, it actually flew.
That matters psychologically as much as technically.
It proves the concept works at some scale.
Sí.
Yes.
Y para vuelos medianos, entre cuatrocientos y dos mil kilómetros, el hidrógeno es probablemente la mejor tecnología a largo plazo.
And for medium-haul flights, between four hundred and two thousand kilometres, hydrogen is probably the best technology in the long term.
Pero necesita una infraestructura nueva en todos los aeropuertos.
But it needs new infrastructure at all airports.
Eso cuesta mucho dinero y mucho tiempo.
That costs a lot of money and a lot of time.
The infrastructure problem is real.
You can't just pump hydrogen into a plane the way you pump kerosene.
You need specialized tanks, specialized fueling systems, the whole chain.
Every major airport would need a retrofit.
We're talking hundreds of billions of euros.
Mira, pero la Unión Europea ya habló de financiar parte de esa infraestructura.
Look, but the European Union already talked about financing part of that infrastructure.
Y con la crisis del combustible de la guerra de Irán, creo que va a haber más presión política para invertir más rápido.
And with the fuel crisis from the Iran war, I think there's going to be more political pressure to invest faster.
There's a pattern in history.
Crises create political will that normal conditions don't.
The 1973 oil shock is what really started European investment in nuclear power.
This fuel crisis might do something similar for aviation technology.
Es que la comparación con 1973 es buena.
The comparison with 1973 is a good one.
Después de esa crisis, muchos países europeos cambiaron su política de energía completamente.
After that crisis, many European countries changed their energy policy completely.
Ahora, quizás, estamos en un momento similar para la aviación.
Now, perhaps, we're in a similar moment for aviation.
So where does this leave Lufthansa, right now, this summer?
Twenty thousand fewer flights.
Passengers who need to get somewhere.
And a technology that's still, at best, a decade away from filling the gap.
A ver, en el corto plazo, los pasajeros tienen que buscar alternativas: trenes, autobuses, o pagar más por los vuelos que todavía existen.
Well, in the short term, passengers have to find alternatives: trains, buses, or pay more for the flights that still exist.
Para Lufthansa, es una crisis pero también es una oportunidad para concentrarse en vuelos más largos, donde ganan más dinero.
For Lufthansa, it's a crisis but also an opportunity to focus on longer flights, where they make more money.
The thing is, I think this is one of those moments that looks like a setback and turns out to be an inflection point.
The short-haul aviation model that was built on cheap oil was always living on borrowed time.
This crisis just...
moved the deadline forward.
Bueno, mira, yo soy más optimista que antes sobre el futuro de la aviación, precisamente porque esta crisis es tan seria.
Well, look, I'm more optimistic than before about the future of aviation, precisely because this crisis is so serious.
Cuando la situación es muy mala, las personas y las empresas buscan soluciones más rápido.
When the situation is very bad, people and companies look for solutions faster.
La tecnología necesita ese tipo de presión.
Technology needs that kind of pressure.
I'll take that.
The pessimist in me says twenty thousand cancelled flights is twenty thousand people stranded or paying more than they can afford.
The optimist says this is the moment the industry finally has no choice but to change.
Both things can be true at once.
Sí.
Yes.
Y la historia nos dice que las grandes revoluciones tecnológicas casi siempre empezaron con una crisis.
And history tells us that great technological revolutions almost always started with a crisis.
El avión del futuro, quizás, nació esta semana en un comunicado de prensa de Lufthansa.
The plane of the future, perhaps, was born this week in a Lufthansa press release.