Airbus' previous tests showed an increase in payload over conventional aircraft. These increases were 5 percent for shortrange aircraft, and 20 percent for long range aircraft. Solid state hydrogen storage has the potential to eliminate the dangers of liquid hydrogen. Of course the reason we are using kerosene all this time is because it is the simplest, easiest fuel to use. It wasn't much of a leap from the steam engine. To use hydrogen as aircraft fuel however requires some sophisticated cryogenic storage technology, which I doubt was available back in 1900. But it has been feasible to use hydrogen since 1950's, it is mostly the infrastructure that never got built. Gasoline infrastructure was simply built first, and nobody wanted to start over again.

Give it another 23 years they'll be screaming for hydrogen.