Pack your bags and fasten your seatbelts because the future of air travel is almost here. Visualise flying off from Australia to Greece in just four hours – that’s less time than it takes to binge-watch your favourite TV show.

Thanks to a revolutionary new hypersonic jet in the early stages of experimentation by Swiss aerospace firm Destinus, this could soon become a reality.

Destinus and Spanish engine manufacturer ITP Aero partnered in June last year to build a hydrogen engine test facility with the support of the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA).

Destinus has won EU grants to fund the design and to test hydrogen-propelled jets capable of hypersonic flight – jets the company says could cut flight times between Australia and Europe to around four hours.

Along with standard R&D, Destinus says it will be flight testing a hydrogen post-combustor jet engine in short order.

“We are delighted to have been awarded these grants, especially because they are a clear sign that Destinus is aligned with the strategic lines of Spain and Europe to advance hydrogen flight,” said Davide Bonetti, Destinus’ Vice President of Business Development and Products.

“For deep tech companies like us, access to these EU recovery funds is essential to carry out advanced research and accelerate the innovation needed to be competitive on a global scale. With these grants, hydrogen-based solutions for aeronautical mobility will be one step closer to becoming a reality.”

The jet’s hypersonic capabilities will allow it to fly at speeds exceeding the sound barrier, making it one of the fastest passenger planes in history. And with its hydrogen fuel cells emitting only water vapor, it’s also one of the most eco-friendly.

This latest investment, two grants totalling €27 million or $AUD43.45 by the Spanish Ministry of Science from the Ministry of Science’s Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico e Industrial, will boost the facility’s capacity.

The test facility, supported by €12 million (AUD $19.5 million) from INTA, will be built near Madrid, and will house Destinus’ protoype hydrogen-fuelled aircraft.

A second grant of €15 million (AUD $24.1 million) will fund research into innovative propulsion system solutions using liquid hydrogen to produce aircraft capable of flying at hypersonic speeds – a speed band typically only used by military aircraft.

The benefits of hydrogen fuelled aircraft would be myriad: alongside reducing aircraft emissions to essentially nil, hydrogen has higher energy by mass (though it must be compressed or turned into a liquid to realise these benefits), and the raw material used to make hydrogen fuel is water – which is returned to the atmosphere as the only by-product.

Destinus is developing a prototype hypersonic hydrogen-fuelled plane that it hopes could in theory get passengers from Sydney to Frankfurt in four hours and 15 minutes. While it may sound fanciful, the company has successfully flight-tested two prototype aircraft.

That said, hydrogen aircraft are very much in their infancy, and plagued by problems such as the hefty storage tanks needed to supply enough fuel, as well as issues around ensuring that the hydrogen supplied is green – that is, that it was produced using renewable electricity rather than energy derived from fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, the last supersonic passenger plane to take to the skies was Concorde more than 20 years ago, which was grounded after a devastating accident and unsustainable running costs.

Nonetheless, airlines are already buying into the concept of hypersonic passenger flight. Last year, American Airlines has committed to purchasing 20 Overture Jets, developed by Boom Supersonic, supersonic passenger aircraft powered by Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF).

In line with its Plan Nacional del Hidrógeno, the Spanish government has invested heavily in hydrogen propulsion as part of its Economic Resilience and Transformation Plan, with support from the European Commission’s economic recovery plan NextGenerationEU.

Spain’s Iberian Peninsula in particular is tipped by the World Economic Forum to become the hydrogen superpower of Europe, thanks to its abundant renewable electricity resources, an unusually flexible electricity grid, existing in-country demand, and a well-developed energy market infrastructure including ports and natural gas pipelines extending into the rest of Europe.

Hydrogen is also a major cornerstone of the European Commission’s plan to secure Europe’s energy supply and wean off oil-rich states.