...AND CHEAPER...:

The next step of the HyFlyer project will see ZeroAvia work toward carrying out a flight of between 250 and 300 nautical miles from the Orkney Islands, an archipelago located in waters off the north coast of mainland Scotland. The plane on this flight will use hydrogen-fuel cells. It's hoped this trip will happen before the end of 2020.

The news on ZeroAvia's flight bookends a week in which European aerospace giant Airbus released details of three hydrogen-fueled concept planes, saying they could enter service by the year 2035.

The designs, named ZEROe, differ in size and style, but are all meant to be zero-emission, using hydrogen as their primary source of power.

One of the designs offers a radical vision of how airplanes could look in the years ahead. Carrying as many as 200 passengers, the "blended-wing body" concept would see wings "merge" with the aircraft's main body.

While the widespread adoption of hydrogen power in aircraft is still some way off, land-based forms of transport are already using the technology, albeit on a small scale. Hydrogen buses have been introduced to the U.K. capital of London, for example.

Elsewhere, European firm Alstom has developed the Coradia iLint, a train that harnesses fuel-cell technology to turn oxygen and hydrogen into electricity.

According to the company, it can reach speeds of up to 140 kilometers per hour (87 miles per hour), is low-noise and "emits only steam and water."

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