A Bedfordshire aircraft engineering company, based at Cranfield airfield, converting the nine-seat Britten-Norman Islander to run on hydrogen fuel cells.
Cranfield Aerospace Solutions, or CAeS, is a design, repair and modification organisation for aircraft that is now focused on zero-carbon flight. Its main project, Project Fresson, is creating a hydrogen fuel cell conversion for the nine-seat Britten-Norman Islander, a small plane used on short island and regional routes. The company says the kit is meant to be a production product fitted under a regulator-approved modification, not a one-off demonstrator. It also does other aircraft work and has helped keep the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Spitfires and Hurricanes airworthy.
The company says it wants to become a world-leading designer and manufacturer of zero-carbon aircraft. Chief executive Paul Hutton, who joined in 2015 after senior roles at Airbus and Thales, said in 2021 that it is critical the aviation industry delivers real zero-emission aircraft. The team says it prefers to work quietly and announce results when it is confident of them.
CAeS is based on the Cranfield University campus in Bedfordshire, with a hangar, the offices a five-minute walk away, and a test Islander registered G-HYUK. It began as a university spin-out in 1997. In 2024 it signed a memorandum with the airline Loganair about operating a hydrogen-electric Islander from Kirkwall in Orkney, and it was one of the first three companies picked for the UK Civil Aviation Authority's Hydrogen Challenge Sandbox. Britten-Norman, which builds the Islander on the Isle of Wight, merged with CAeS in 2023, according to a news release. The most recent evidence we read dates from 2024, so check its website for its current status.
A 2024 profile describes a collaborative, safety-focused team in which design engineers work closely with the hangar technicians who build and test the aircraft. Senior staff work beside early-career engineers and offer mentoring. Principal design engineer Christine Holmes, who joined in 2012, said, "It's exciting to be involved, to be part of a small group that's moving aviation forward." These are the profiles' and company's own accounts.
The same article features Alexander Purvis, a Cranfield graduate from 2022 who works on mass and balance and joins flight tests, and Daqing Yang, also a Cranfield graduate, which shows one route in is an aerospace degree from Cranfield. We did not find a graduate scheme, apprenticeship or current vacancy list, so check the CAeS website. Engineering, safety and design roles seem the most relevant.
Website: www.cranfieldaerospace.com
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