Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Airbus Balances Automation and Airmanship
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By Chris Sloan
Oct. 09, 2025, © Leeham News: Automation, advances in the prospect and single-pilot operation, and overall aircraft safety are great for the airline and commercial aerospace industries.
But the downside is that pilot skills are subject to deterioration. Hands-on experience and skills become necessary in an instant when emergencies begin to pile up.
US Airways flight 1549, the so-called Miracle in the Hudson, is one example where advanced design in flight envelope protection in the Airbus A320, combined with the flying skills of the pilots, led to a successful water ditching alongside New York City.
Qantas Airways flight 32, an Airbus A380, suffered an uncontained engine failure that triggered more than 100 identified faults in the advanced computer system. However, the five pilots in the cockpit required experienced thinking and top-flight skills to land the airplane safely.
These are just two examples of technical advances combining with pilot skills for the ultimate safety of the airplane.
Airbus acknowledges the tension between automation, computer advancements, and the necessity for pilots to maintain hands-on flying skills.
Excerpt: The Rise and Fall of Boeing and the Way Back
Oct. 7, 2025, (c) Leeham News: Boeing’s decline into the existential crisis that befell the company in March 2019 was decades in the making. The 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas Corp. is pegged as the tripping point. But the foundation pre-dated the merger.
In Scott Hamilton’s new book, The Rise and Fall of Boeing, and the Way Back, takes a deep dive into Boeing’s rise from its 1916 birth through the piston era and the dawn of the jet age, when Boeing’s “family” approach to airplanes thrust it past the Douglas Aircraft Co., despite nearly losing its advantage. After peaking at more than 60% of the jet market share, Boeing began a long descent.
Rise and Fall not only documents strategic and tactical wins and losses, it goes into the development of the 737 MAX and its now-infamous MCAS that led to two fatal crashes in October 2018 and March 2019, plunging the company into a path that nearly brought it to bankruptcy. The leadership eras of Phil Condit, Harry Stonecipher, Jim McNerney, Dennis Muilenburg, and David Calhoun are reviewed and critiqued by suppliers and former Boeing employees. The current CEO, Kelly Ortberg, arrived on Aug. 8, 2024, just five weeks before the contract with the 33,000-member IAM 751 touch labor union expired. The union struck for 53 days before a historic contract was reached.
Ortberg’s not insignificant challenges include returning Boeing’s production rates to levels that predated the March 2019 grounding of the MAX; returning Commercial Airplanes and the Defense units to profitability; paying down billions of dollars in debt; and deciding what new airplane programs to launch, and when.
An excerpt of Rise and Fall sets the stage. The book in softback and eBook formats is available here.
Perspective on Boeing’s 737 replacement
By Scott Hamilton
Sept. 30, 2025, © Leeham News: The Wall Street Journal billed the story as an exclusive, and it did contain details previously unreported.
But the fact that Boeing is working on a 737 replacement isn’t new, even if Boeing has been super-quiet about it. The breadcrumbs have been dropped into public sight all along, and within aviation circles, more has been discussed as well.
Under former CEO David Calhoun, he and other executives discussed the 737 replacement in the form of the transonic truss brace wing (TTBW) single-aisle concept. The very wide, thin wing had about 35 feet of folding wing (as opposed to the folding wing tips on the 777X).
Boeing and Airbus are designing future wings with long folds to allow much greater wingspan than today’s wings. The future folding wings will have a much long fold than the Boeing 777X. Credit: Leeham News.
What Boeing didn’t say publicly, but which was known within aviation circles, was that Boeing was also designing a conventional wing-and-tube 737 replacement in parallel. Boeing always has a Plan A and a Plan B under study, so this was no surprise. But a former 737 program engineer told LNA that Boeing needed a Plan B in this case to serve as a baseline against which the TTBW could be compared for efficiency.
When Calhoun’s successor, Kelly Ortberg, killed the TTBW, Boeing said research and development on the wing would continue. Of course, it would be a replacement for a 737. Why else continue this very specific R&D? Not inconsequentially, Airbus has long been designing a folding wing “Wing of Tomorrow” for the A320 replacement.
Furthermore, the underlying research into the TTBW’s fuselage and systems may be applied to a new airplane, just as elements of the Sonic Cruiser made their way into the 787 in the early 2000s.
Manufacturing and Materials Takes Center Stage in Next-Gen Aircraft at Global Aerospace Summit
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By Chris Sloan
Sept. 29, 2025, © Leeham News: At the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Aerospace Summit in Washington, D.C., on September 9, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury reminded attendees that propulsion alone cannot deliver the performance leap expected from future aircraft. He said Airbus is targeting a 20–25% overall fuel efficiency improvement and noted that “half of it will come with the propulsion. When we integrate the bigger engine to be more efficient at the engine level, there are some losses. So the other half will come from the wing, aerodynamic efficiency, weight, and those kinds of things.”
This “other half” is why advanced materials and manufacturing are stepping into the spotlight. The conversation, moderated by Kevin Chow, EVP and Head of Aerostructures and Systems, Commercial Aerospace, ST Engineering, centered on next-generation programs, which are no longer just about engines or even airframe design. It is about how to build aircraft faster, lighter, and with greater precision to meet historically high production rates.
(Left to Right): Daryl Taylor, Senior Vice President, U.S. Commercial Operations, Airbus; Eric Hein, Director, Strategy and Product Development, National Institute for Aviation Research, Wichita State University; Tom Gentile, Chairman, CEO, and President, Hexcel Corporation; and panel moderator Kevin Chow, EVP and Head of Aerostructures and Systems, Commercial Aerospace, ST Engineering.
Slowing History, Faster Targets
Airbus aims to produce 14 A220s per month in 2026 and 75 A320 family aircraft per month in 2027 — a dramatic increase from current output. Daryl Taylor, Senior Vice President of US Commercial Operations, said that “historically production rates in this industry take a long time to get up to speed.” He said Airbus is acting now to be ready when the following clean-sheet aircraft is launched: “We know that with that type of backlog we expect in the future, we’re gonna have a fully proven automated set of solutions to deploy.”
In Mobile (AL), Airbus operates two final assembly lines for the A220 and A320 families and is building a third that will open soon. Taylor said that “just throwing more people at the problem is not the answer. At Airbus, we think [automation] is critical to the core of our execution and ramp-up, so we are investing heavily in our own capabilities and making acquisitions. We’re not relying on others to do that.”
How’s the next new aircraft produced? Part 7. Other OEMs.
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By the Leeham News Team
Sept. 25, 2025, © Leeham News: In Part 1 of this series, we described the production system for Embraer. Should Embraer or any other OEM enter the race for the next aircraft in the single aisle segment, it will pose the same challenges as for Boeing and Airbus.
Embraer has recovered from the collapse of the Boeing-EMB joint venture, and the E195-E2 is selling well. But the regional jet market is limited. Embraer is considering whether to move up to the mainline jet sector. Credit: Embraer.
The aircraft must integrate new types of engines, and large parts must be made with the new types of composites that enable high-rate production.
How’s the next new aircraft produced? Part 6. Airbus: Production of future aircraft
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By the Leeham News Team
Sept. 22, 2025, © Leeham News: In Part 5 of this series, we described the efforts to improve Airbus’ present production, and what the learnings were from changes in the FAL setup.
Airbus A220 production line in Montreal, when it was still Bombardier. Airbus is revamping the process to become more efficient and reduce costs. Credit: Leeham News.
We also described how Airbus has learned to refocus on the production mechanic, as he/she is finally the enabler and problem solver in a complicated system.
For the next generation aircraft that will replace today’s single aisle A320/A321 there are special challenges that are forcing Airbus to change the way that the aircraft are produced.
How’s the next new aircraft produced? Part 5. Airbus: Improving the present
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By the Leeham News Team
Sept. 18, 2025, © Leeham News: In Part 1 of this series, we described the history behind Airbus’ very different production setup. The need to give a distributed value creation to participating countries in the then-Airbus joint venture, forced a multinational distributed production system that remains today.
The Airbus A320 fuselage production line in Hamburg, Germany. Credit: Leeham News.
We now examine the recent changes/improvements in this setup, including Airbus’ recent policies around the organization of production from a pre-Paris Air Show demonstration of their new A320/A321 Final Assembly Line (FAL) in Toulouse.
Boeing’s Orberg: Striving for parity with Airbus deliveries
- Traveled work, rework are still obstacles
- 777X certification running late; customers now see first deliveries in 4Q2026
By Karl Sinclair
Sept. 17, 2025, © Leeham News: “We were almost at parity on deliveries with Airbuses last month…. We’re getting there.”
Kelly Ortberg, the CEO of The Boeing Co. Credit: Boeing.
That was the opening salvo from The Boeing Company (BA) and CEO Kelly Ortberg, as it begins to claw its way back from the depths after a difficult six-year stretch.
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Laguna Conference, Ortberg closed his interview by remarking on how close Boeing was getting to delivering aircraft at levels only recently seen by Airbus.
“I feel really good one year in that my plan is working, that we put together. People are getting excited. Customers are feeling better,” he said.
However, the deliveries comparison with Airbus isn’t precisely an even match. Boeing has finally cleared its inventory of 737 MAXes, a six-year task from when the MAX was grounded for 21 months beginning in March 2019 and extending through the extended recovery period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Airbus, meanwhile, has about 60 A320neo family airplanes in storage awaiting engines from CFM International and Pratt & Whitney. Based on production rates, Airbus has a 60% share vs Boeing’s 40%.
How’s the next new aircraft produced? Part 2. Advancing the State of the Art
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By the Leeham News Team
Sept. 8, 2025, © Leeham News: In the second part of our article series about the Production of the next new aircraft, we look at the latest trends around advancing the state of the art for aircraft production.
Figure 1. The next new airplane, whether from Airbus, Boeing, Embraer or another company, will use AI and other new technologies. Credit: Leeham Co.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to replace human beings, or so claims Elon Musk.
Digital design and digital twin factories are going to dramatically lower costs, speed construction, and improve production efficiency. At least that’s what proponents claim.
While there might be a lot of truth in these claims, it’s not the whole story.
But the drive toward reindustrialization, as one industry consultant calls it, may be a drive that is too theoretical and could overlook the fact that production is done and controlled by humans.
One aerospace company is putting the brakes on the theoretical spin and focusing on the road to higher efficiency by slowing down this transformation in favor of employee training and motivation to emphasize safety over cost-cutting and automation to gain efficiency.
Striking a balance between the reindustrialization theoretical gains and the focus on the human in the system will be tricky. LNA had spent months interviewing companies, consultants, current and former employees of key companies, and researching public-domain information to paint a picture of how production will be transformed in the coming years.
We begin the advancement of the state-of-the-art part of the series with an interview LNA did at the Paris Air Show with the consulting firm Accenture.
How’s the next new aircraft produced? Part 1. The starting point.
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By the Leeham News Team
Sept. 4, 2025, © Leeham News: The coming decade is likely to see announcements of new airplanes from Airbus and Boeing. If Embraer decides to move up into the mainline sector, a new airplane from the Brazilian manufacturer should also be announced in the next few years.
This means the clock is ticking toward program launches anywhere between 2027 and 2030, depending on progress from GE Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce in developing new engines.
New airplane concept: The Boeing New Midmarket Airplane, c. 2019. Credit: Leeham News.
For the airframe manufacturers, there are important steps before a new program can be launched. One is how the aircraft shall be developed. We wrote about it in our series “What’s the Next New Aircraft?”. But equally important is, how shall the next new aircraft be produced? It’s what this seven part series is about.
Since June, LNA has published a series of articles about new airplanes, new technologies, new design and new production processes that must be sorted before any of the OEMs move forward. Across the seven parts of this series, we identify flaws and challenges at both Airbus and Boeing, with lessons to be learned as both airframers reshape their approach for future manufacturing.
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We call this series “How’s the next new aircraft produced?”. We start by going through where the major OEMs are with their legacy production.