On July 17, Dr. Susan Ying presented an interesting topic on the Aviation’s Third Revolution. Dr. Susan Ying has been in the aerospace industry for over 38 years. Her experience includes working at Boeing, NASA and COMAC. Currently she is Vice President of Ampaire, an electric aircraft company based at Hawthorne Airport. Her passion for flight started back when she was in college at Stanford and she obtained her pilot's license. She is a proud owner of a Cessna 150 and Citabria 7GCBC. Dr. Ying presented an overview of aeronautical innovation trends and highlights that global aviation is seeing. She discussed how the challenges of aviation involve environmental issues of noise and pollutions, economic issues of cost of flight especially for fuel or energy, and the consumers need for reasonable cost and availability of flights. One of the current trends of Aviation’s Third Revolution is electric planes. There have been multiple global companies that are designing electric airplanes. Electric airplanes cost significantly less to fly, mostly due to the energy cost, electricity verses gasoline fuel. Two of the major limitations of the current electric airplanes are short duration of flight and the time needed to re-energize the airplane. Dr. Ying sees the future of electric airplanes for training and shorter commuter flights.
Ampaire has developed a hybrid electrical airplane by retrofitting a twin engine Cessna 337 Skymaster. This hybrid airplane will cut fuel cost by 50% and reduce emissions. This is Ampaire's first step into the electric airplane market. This hybrid is one of the large electrical airplanes capable of carrying additional passengers. Ampaire is currently developing a large all electric airplane capable of carrying 19 passengers.
Dr. Ying’s presentation with her extensive knowledge of aerospace, aviation, and the impact on the economy and environment was simulating to all DAFers, not just our engineering members. We look forward to news of Ampaire in the future. Thank you to Dr. Ying for giving us a better understanding of what is coming our way in the future!