After 15 years of work and €1.5 billion invested, Airbus has quietly stepped away from hydrogen aviation.
↳ Officially: “postponed” for 10 years.
↳ In reality: ❌ shelved. Forgotten. Buried.
Not because the engineering failed. Not because the science broke down.
But because nobody wants it.
♘ Airlines responded with brutal clarity:
➟ “No infrastructure. No fueling systems. No viable ports. No way.”
♘ Fuel suppliers were equally candid:
➟ “No aircraft = no business case. We’re not spending billions to chill liquid hydrogen at -253°C for ghost planes.”
Even HYPORT’s hyped hydrogen generators?
✅ Output: 400 kg/day.
❌ Required storage: 5633 m³.
You’d need a football field of tanks to store enough hydrogen to refuel one small plane. And you’d lose half of it just trying to keep it cold.
Compare that to kerosene:
✅ Transportable. Storable. Usable. Anywhere, anytime. In steel tanks. On trucks. At ports.
Hydrogen?
➟ You build the infrastructure first.
➟ Then build enough aircraft.
➟ Then coordinate ports worldwide.
➟ Then pray you don’t lose the fuel to boil-off.
It’s a paradox in reverse: invest billions so someone else might maybe consider flying.
This is what happens when political aspiration replaces strategic thinking.
When the technology roadmap serves PR, not performance.
Hydrogen might power the future.
But aviation isn’t the place where that future begins.
♘ Markets follow demand.
♘ Demand follows feasibility.
♘ Feasibility follows physics.
And physics, as usual, doesn’t negotiate.
↳ Lesson: Real sustainability isn’t about branding things green.
It’s about making them work — without fantasy spreadsheets and wishful infrastructure.