[bdamm]

Yeah basically all airports that have commercial service also have access to power. There are exceptions like seaplane bases and small country strips, but there are more than enough airports with access to commercial or even industrial grade power to make electric airplanes that require charging viable. The final step of linking up the airport power supply to the airplane charger is peanuts in the world of aviation. Almost all airports have a fleet of fuel trucks, therefore, the cost of buying a fuel truck is the low end of the acceptable cost for ground infrastructure investment to open a new route for an airline.

[bronco21016]

I just reread what I wrote and I think maybe I wasn’t very clear.

There’s electricity at every single gas station in the US. Why can’t we pull into any gas station in the US and charge an electric car? Even now that electric cars are gaining market share and becoming more common.

Someone has to build, supply, and hook up high power charging systems. You can’t just fly your $5 million eJet into any airport in the US and run a 100’ extension cord into the FBO. If that’s the plan, you certainly can’t hope to leave the same day. It will take at least 3 days for your 1 MWh eJet to finish charging.

We’re in the pre-Tesla days of electric aircraft. There’s a few players working on the aircraft and they’re getting close. However, until a ‘Tesla’ comes along where they also install charging infrastructure at the airports their customers are planning on using, we’re not going to see a commercially viable electric aircraft.

[ramses0]

The best way to do it would be start in the corners and cross in the middle. Seattle/SF/LA => { colorado? vegas? texas? chicago? } => NY/DC/Miami

If you can link up some sort of route(s) to deal with range-anxiety / weather, and can criss-cross the country, you're in business.

Once your route is built, it's straightforward to manage capacity/flight-plans (reservations / networks / routing), and then you move directly to demand-generation, but you'll have a real tough time competing directly with coast-to-coast direct flights.

[bdamm]

Yeah, I think you're mostly right. I suspect it's going to start with seaplanes (oddly) because they fly short hop routes that are ideal for electric aircraft. Then you'll start to see new routes made economic by electrification, such as; Marin County->Palo Alto, SurfAir routes (like linking up the dozen airports sprinkled around Los Angeles area), generally linking up small hops. At the beginning electric aircraft won't be competing with existing airline routes, they'll be expanding coverage and reducing prices for local area hops.