More Affordable Small Aircraft Manufacturing project in Clean Sky 2 replaces metal nacelle with composites compositesworld.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from compositesworld.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
PZL Mielec, a Lockheed Martin Company, has conducted a flight test of the M28 aircraft with a novel composite engine nacelle as part of the Clean Sky 2 project SAT-AM (More Affordable Small Aircraft Manufacturing). Photo Credit: PZL Mielec.
The Small Air Transport (SAT) category, defined as aircraft with between 4 and 19 passenger seats, is the technologically neglected niche of air travel the Cinderella of aviation. Manufacturers have been hesitant to invest heavily in new technology here, due to the relatively low production volumes and the tight budgets of operators. Other factors are also at play: “The market for SAT aircraft is not so developed in Europe, nor elsewhere in the world, for several reasons,” says Clean Sky project officer Antonello Marino. “Technical and social barriers relating to passenger comfort, consumer perceptions around the safety compared to larger aircrafts, manufacturing, operating and recurring costs finally lead to high costs for passengers.”