That's not really their point, it's do we have any reasonable hope of applications that require the energy density of fossil fuels (flight) to be powered by electricity.
Flight will never be powered by electricity, so you can stop checking. Using synthetic liquid fuels for flight is the only currently-foreseeable path to carbon-neutral, long-haul passenger flight.
Long haul yes, but it's a little known story that regional airlines are on the edge of disaster because: (1) they can't find pilots, (2) manufacturers have stopped making the 50-seat jets that are the mainstay of that business. Airports like ITH are already at the top of the "regional development problems" in third-tier cities and it is not so clear they're going to be able to have service in 20 years the way things are going.
Given that the status quo is "go out of business when old planes can't be maintained anymore" the possibility of some radical change like electrification or a change in the scope rules is increasingly likely.
...which 50 seat jets are you talking about? At that size I would expect turboprops to be preferred, and turboprops of that size are definitely still being built..
both of which stopped manufacturing circa 2020. We used to get the DASH-8 which I liked to fly more but they stopped using it because it breaks down more often which is no problem if it happens at PHL but takes hours to get a crew to fix if it breaks down at ITH.
Perhaps I am missing your broader point, but the fact that ITH exists and only has scheduled service to New York is a bit ridiculous. That should be a high-speed rail route that takes you from city center to center, if America intends to become a developed nation.
God it's gotten worse. Last time I looked they had flights to PHL and DTW.
As it is now there is fierce competition for bus service from Ithaca to NYC (budget to various grades of premium) and I find it almost unimaginable that I'd fly to NYC to get to NYC because flying to JFK or atrocious EWR (never once made a transfer at EWR that didn't involve re-entering the secure zone) wouldn't save time to get to Midtown.
If you try to take the bus in the other direction you find you can't get from here to there. A friend of mine who used to ride the bus through Canada to get to the Detroit suburbs now takes the bus up to Syracuse, then takes Amtrak and gets out at 4am. On the way back one time there was no room on the bus although he paid for a ticket ahead of time.
The real significance of the regional airport is that it connects to a hub that goes everywhere. As it is if I have to fly somewhere I'll probably have to go up to SYR where at least I can fly on Jetblue and know I'm flying on an Airbus.
which I really enjoyed flying in, but they got replaced with 50-seat regional jets because regional jets are less likely to break down at a small airport requiring a crew to travel two hours to repair them.
As it is, academics at Cornell and Ithaca College will struggle to bring in speakers and it's just one more bit of "stave the countryside" that will drive knowledge workers to go to blue cities where their votes don't count -- it's how you hand the next election to a Demagogue.
You're right I was not thinking of the probable more common use case that a trip originating at ITH is only connecting at JFK and eventually arriving elsewhere. For that traveler a train to Manhattan doesn't work as well.
If it was all integrated it could be great. I have always been puzzled about how few Americans will use public transit to the airport. When I go to a conference in San Francisco I run into European conference goers on the BART but if I am with American coworkers they always insist on taking the SuperShuttle. Similarly I’ve usually taken the subway to JFK even when it meant riding on an insipod shuttle bus
Flight will never be powered by electricity, so you can stop checking.
Fuel cells could well enable 30X better power densities. That would count to me as flight powered by electricity. There's also beamed power. Perhaps this wouldn't be practical, but it's a thought experiment that shows there's nothing impossible from first principles for electrical powered flight.
