Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 9. Conceptual phase Certification work.
By Bjorn Fehrm and Henry Tam
September 26, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a series about ideas on how the long development times for large airliners can be shortened. New project talks about cutting development time and reaching certification and production faster than previous projects..
The series will discuss the typical development cycles for an FAA Part 25 aircraft, called a transport category aircraft, and what different ideas there are to reduce the development times.
We will use the Gantt plan in Figure 1 as a base for our discussions.
Figure 1. A generic new Part 25 airliner development plan. Source: Leeham Co. Click to see better.
*** Special thanks to Andrew Telesca for helping with this article***
Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 8. Conceptual System design.
September 19, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a series about ideas on how the long development times for large airliners can be shortened. New project talks about cutting development time and reaching certification and production faster than previous projects..
The series will discuss the typical development cycles for an FAA Part 25 aircraft, called a transport category aircraft, and what different ideas there are to reduce the development times.
We will use the Gantt plan in Figure 1 as a base for our discussions.
Figure 1. A generic new Part 25 airliner development plan. Source: Leeham Co. Click to see better.
*** Special thanks to Ron Everlove for helping with this article***
Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 7. Conceptual Design.
By Bjorn Fehrm and Henry Tam
September 12, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a series about ideas on how the long development times for large airliners can be shortened. New project talks about cutting development time and reaching certification and production faster than previous projects..
The series will discuss the typical development cycles for an FAA Part 25 aircraft, called a transport category aircraft, and what different ideas there are to reduce the development times.
We will use the Gantt plan in Figure 1 as a base for our discussions.
Figure 1. A generic new Part 25 airliner development plan. Source: Leeham Co. Click to see better.
Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 6. IT support.
By Bjorn Fehrm and Henry Tam.
September 5, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a series about ideas on how the long development times for large airliners can be shortened. New project talks about cutting development time and reaching certification and production faster than previous projects.
The series will discuss the typical development cycles for an FAA Part 25 aircraft, called a transport category aircraft, and what different ideas there are to reduce the development times.
We will use the Gantt plan in Figure 1 as a base for our discussions.
Figure 1. A generic new Part 25 airliner development plan. Source: Leeham Co. Click to see better.
Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 5. Market research.
By Bjorn Fehrm and Henry Tam
August 29, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a series about ideas on how the long development times for large airliners can be shortened. New project talks about cutting development time and reaching certification and production faster than previous projects.
The series will discuss the typical development cycles for an FAA Part 25 aircraft, called a transport category aircraft, and what different ideas there are to reduce the development times.
We will use the Gantt plan in Figure 1 as a base for our discussions.
Figure 1. A generic new Part 25 airliner development plan. Source: Leeham Co. Click to see better.
Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 4. Feasibility studies.
By Bjorn Fehrm and Henry Tam
August 22, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a series about ideas on how the long development times for large airliners can be shortened. New projects talk about cutting development time and reaching certification and production faster than previous projects.
The series will discuss the typical development cycles for an FAA Part 25 aircraft, called a transport category aircraft, and what different ideas there are to reduce the development times.
We will use the Gantt plan in Figure 1 as a base for our discussions.
Figure 1. A generic new Part 25 airliner development plan. Source: Leeham Co. Click to see better.
Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 3.
By Bjorn Fehrm
August 15, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a series about recent ideas on how the long development times for large airliners can be shortened. New project talks about cutting development time and reaching certification and production faster than previous projects.
The series will discuss the typical development cycles for an FAA Part 25 aircraft, called a transport category aircraft, and what different ideas there are to reduce the development times.
We will use the Gantt plan in Figure 1 as a base for our discussions. Before we start the discussions, we outline the process to certify a transport category aircraft under the US FAA 14 CFR Part 25 regulations and how it relates to the Figure 1 plan.
Figure 1. A generic new Part 25 airliner development plan. Source: Leeham Co. Click to see better.
Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 2.
By Bjorn Fehrm
August 8, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a series about ideas on how the long development times for large airliners can be shortened. New projects talk about cutting development time and reaching certification and production faster than previous projects.
The series will discuss the typical development cycles for an FAA Part 25 aircraft, called a transport category aircraft, and what different ideas there are to reduce the development times.
We will use the Gantt plan in Figure 1 as a base for our discussions.
Figure 1. A generic Part 25 airliner development plan. Source: Leeham Co. Click to see better.
Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 1.
By Bjorn Fehrm
August 1, 2025, ©. Leeham News: Four years ago I did a series about aircraft development together with Henry Tam and Andrew Telesca. Both worked on the Mitsubishi Spacejet program. You can find the series here.
It was about the arduous task of developing and producing a certified aircraft for the FAA Part 23 standard and its EASA equivalent. The idea was to better describe what’s ahead for the many upstarts that wanted to develop 9-seat and 19-seat alternative propulsion aircraft.
Now we do a series about recent ideas on how the long development times for large airliners can be shortened. New projects talk about cutting development calendar time by one-third or more. Is this realistic?
Figure 1. The A350 development schedule from December 2011. Source: Airbus.
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Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 32. Epilogue.
By Bjorn Fehrm
July 25, 2025, ©. Leeham News: In October last year, we began a series on how air transport is performing against the emission goals for the year 2050.
The ambition to reduce and eventually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions began in earnest 11 years ago, when Airbus flew the Airbus E-Fan at the 2014 Farnborough Air Show (Figure 1).
Figure 1. The Airbus E-fan flying at the 2014 Farnborough Air Show. Source: Wikipedia.
The result of this inspiring flight, which utilized technology that emitted no CO2 or other greenhouse gases (if the batteries were charged with green electricity), was an avalanche of projects from established players as well as upstarts. The optimistic view was that there was a solution to the emissions from airliners.