Can Hydrogen Save Aviation’s Fuel Challenges? It’s Got a Way to Go. Small, experimental hydrogen-powered planes are paving the way for net-zero carbon aviation by 2050. But the route is rocky.

More recently, ZeroAvia experienced a bad news/good news scenario when its hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered Piper Malibu Mirage M350 crash landed last April. The good news was that no one was hurt, despite the plane losing a wing. Better still, with no fuel to leak and no hot engine to ignite it, there was no Hindenburg-like conflagration.

“The hydrogen system itself all held up perfectly,” Mr. Miftakhov said. “The emergency crew said if it were a fossil-fuel plane it would have been a major fire.”