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By Scott Hamilton

Aug. 4, 2025, © Leeham News: As the aviation industry considers what new major airliners to develop for the next 50 years, new engines, folding wings, advanced materials, and new design and production processes will also be key.

Collins Aerospace, a unit of RTX Corp., is deep into research and development of advanced structures.

This portion of Collins is headquartered in Rockford (IL), about 90 miles northwest of Chicago. Its antecedents are Hamilton-Sundstrand and B. F. Goodrich Aerospace. Each was acquired by United Technologies, the forerunner of today’s RTX.

Collins has three basic lines of business: aerostructures, landing systems, and propeller and cockpit controls.

Going back to Jim McNerney, the CEO of The Boeing Co. from 2005-2015, the company said repeatedly that its next new airplane will be as much, or more, about production than it will be about the aircraft.

A new materials airplane based on composites or thermoplastics or a similar material to replace the ubiquitous 737 needs a production rate of 60-80 a month, or even more. This can’t be achieved with an autoclave process. Boeing and NASA, the US space agency, are studying new materials processes aimed at this rate.

Airbus is conducting similar studies in Europe with EU companies.

Airbus is openly talking about launching a new airplane program in 2030 to replace the A320 beginning in 2038. Boeing is quietly understood to be operating on a similar timeline for a new program that may be aimed at a New Midmarket Airplane (NMA) category airplane.

The underlying question, then, is whether these new processes will be ready by the time Airbus and Boeing want to launch an airplane program.