GCIA hosts another first in electric flight

MOSES LAKE — It was another day for the aviation record books at the Grant County International Airport on Thursday. “We are, I think, the second-largest hydrogen airplane ever to fly after the Tupolev 155, which the Soviet (Union) flew in 1988,” said Paul Eremenko, the co-founder and CEO of Hawthorne, California-based Universal Hydrogen. “But I think we can reasonably claim to the fact that we are the largest to cruise principally on hydrogen.” Eremenko spoke to a crowd of about 100 people gathered in the GCIA main terminal following a roughly 20-minute test flight of a special Dash 8 commuter airliner which flew with one electric engine powered by a hydrogen fuel cell system created by Universal Hydrogen.