Flight International - 04

Inspired by emerging technology and the ethics
of safety, Danielle McLean is helping to pioneer
the future of aviation via her role with a non-profit
organisation backing the use of hydrogen fuel
HySky ambitions
Pilar Wolfsteller Las Vegas
In 2018, Danielle McLean was studying for her
Master’s degree while working as an aerospace
engineer at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas.
During a class about sustainable aviation, she had
an epiphany.
“I learned about electric vertical take-off and
landing [eVTOL] vehicles. We studied hydrogen, and
the feasibility of its use in aviation,” McLean says.
“This was everything that I believed in, converging
into this really cool technology.”
She became obsessed with emissions-free flight –
particularly with hydrogen propulsion – and dropped
everything to pursue this sudden new-found passion.
“I quit my Master’s, I quit my job and started my
own company. I was reading papers every night,
it was getting to a point where I was advising my
advisors. I thought, ‘We can totally do this hydrogen
thing’, and we did.”
She called her start-up “Happy Takeoff”. The
company retrofitted a large drone, and flew it on
hydrogen power.
“One of the biggest challenges that we had, funnily
enough, was not the actual flight itself, but accessing
hydrogen,” she says. “It was very difficult to find
hydrogen, we had to travel hours to get a couple of
tanks. So it was extremely inefficient.”
Shared vision
Through Happy Takeoff, she met others who shared
her thirst for knowledge in making hydrogen
fuel-cell-powered air vehicles viable. The group’s
members met regularly online and conducted educational
webinars to learn from each other. They morphed
into the “H2eVTOL Council” under the auspices
of the Vertical Flight Society (VFS). McLean eventually
became its chair, and VFS’s hydrogen advisor.
“There were five of us when we started in 2020.
Within a few months, we had 100 people. Now, three
years later, we’ve got 400 people in that group,”
McLean says. The Council recently was spun off from
the VFS to form the non-profit HySky Society, with
VFS remaining a strategic partner.
“Our mission is to advance hydrogen aviation
across North America,” she says. “We really see
a need for that. There was just no organisation
dedicated to that in the US. We’ve been watching
other countries, especially in Europe, become competitive
in the hydrogen aviation space, and they are
much farther ahead. We want to learn from them.”
The group is now planning what it describes as
“the world’s largest hydrogen aviation event”, set
to take place virtually, in June. McLean is hoping for
1,000 participants.
But her passion for building a more environmentally-friendly
way to power flight runs much deeper.
Studying engineering ethics at university – and
an ensuing aviation disaster – made a profound
impression on her and her classmates.
“The conclusion we all came to on our own… was
that every catastrophic disaster that has come from
something man-made was a result of leadership not
listening to engineers.
“In your career you will encounter business
executives that are going to say: ‘That’s too
expensive. That won’t work. We don’t have time. That
will take too long.’ But never, never waver from your
ethics, because people could die,” McLean adds.
“That stuck with me.”
Then two Boeing 737 Max aircraft – whose fuselages
came from the company she worked for in Wichita
– crashed, killing a combined total of 346 people.
“When the 737 Max aircraft crashed, I just kept
thinking about that,” she says.
Like building a new aircraft, tackling climate
change is also an engineering challenge that must
be mastered. Environmental concerns and the ethics
of engineering and safety are the two issues that
drive her today.
“And it being too expensive, or taking too long just
isn’t… a good enough answer.”
Once she jumped into sustainable aviation, McLean
found that large aerospace companies, which may
“The boys had this
knowledge I didn’t have.
But the eVTOL space was
new to all of us. It was a
level playing field”
82 Flight International April 2023