Can somebody enlighten me? What's the point of a hybrid aircraft?
I can see the point of a hybrid car more or less. You can charge the batteries with brake energy which would otherwise go to waste, and you need a less powerful engine since a car normally needs only about 20-30% of its power to maintain highway speeds. The rest is for overtaking and showing off. A smaller engine leads to lower friction/pumping losses etc., so uses less fuel.
But an aircraft engine essentially runs at about 70% for most of the time it's running. And even in the descent most engines still supply 30-50% power. So it's not like you can regenerate brake energy, or run the engine at a few extra % in the cruise, so that you have battery power available to crawl along in a traffic jam. So why would you take a big battery and a big generator/electric motor with you into the sky?