By Scott Hamilton and Bjorn Fehrm
July 31, 2025, © Leeham News: We wrap up our five-part series today on What’s the Next New Airplane in the coming decades. We now look at Airplanes 9-13 in Figure 1 below.
These are the (9) COMAC 929, (10) Eco-version of New Light Twin, (11) CFM Open Fan single aisle, (12) the Boeing 787 re-engine, and (13) the Airbus A350 re-engine.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
July 21, 2025, © Leeham News: Our series about “What’s the next new aircraft” was introduced last week, where we look at what potential new aircraft could be introduced over the following decades, and what technologies these would use.
In Part 2 of the five-part series, we introduce some basics around aircraft efficiency and examine what areas these 13 new aircraft aim to improve to enhance their efficiency.
In the following Parts, we will look into these aircraft in more detail and write about how challenging it will be to develop and mature the needed technologies.
March 29, 2024, ©. Leeham News: We finished our article series about New Aircraft Technologies last week. It dealt with the different new technologies that a next-generation airliner could use to increase efficiency and by it environmental emissions.
An area that we touched upon but didn’t dig deeper into was engine development. When airframe development historically decided how long a new generation of aircraft took to develop, it gradually changed to engine development being the more calendar-time-consuming and riskier development for the last generations. This article series will discuss why and what can be done about it.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
February 1, 2024, © Leeham News: We have been looking at a re-engine of the 767, a move that Boeing is considering to avoid a production stop after 2027. The present 767 engines don’t pass emission regulations introduced by the FAA, EASA, and other regulators for production and delivery beyond 2027.
We used our Aircraft Performance and Cost model to look at the economics of the original 767 Freighter versus a re-engined one before Christmas. Now, we install a passenger long-range cabin and look at the per-passenger mile economics of a re-engined 767-300ER versus the original version.
November 23, 2023, ©. Leeham News: We are discussing the different phases of an airliner development program. After covering Conceptual, Preliminary, and Detailed design, the manufacturing of prototypes, and their roles in flight tests, we now look at production.
The focus and work around the production of an airliner has increased over the last decade. Why this renewed focus?
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By Bjorn Fehrm
September 14, 2023, © Leeham News: For more than a year, we have heard all the Airliner OEMs complain that they can’t increase production rates because of delivery problems in their supply chain. It’s a problem that is not easy to fix; it just goes on and on.
What is the root problem behind the persistent problem of increasing production of our airliners? There are specific problems for each aircraft type and time, but some fundamental problems are behind the overall problem of increasing the production numbers.
We analyze these fundamental problems in a series of articles.
Figure 1. The Airbus A321, a model which a new customer gets delivered six years from now if the production increases to plan. Source: Airbus.
August 11, 2023, ©. Leeham News: We have described a number of technological advances that can be used to make the next-generation airliners more efficient and, thus, more environmentally friendly.
Part of developing more efficient next-generation aircraft is to change the development process to be more efficient. The last Boeing aircraft, the 787, took 7.5 years from launch to entry into service, and Airbus A350 took 8.5 years.
The target is to reduce this by up to 50%, but how?
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By Bjorn Fehrm
Nov. 16, 2022, © Leeham News: Over the last weeks, we have looked at the economics of our typical long haul widebodies when fitted with normal and high-density seating.
We continue this series by comparing the Boeing 787-9 and Airbus A330-900, when both fly eight or nine abreast economy cabins. As before, we fly the world’s busiest long-haul route, London Heathrow, to New York JFK and look at the comfort and economic data.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
Nov. 3, 2022, © Leeham News: Last week, we described the New Production Standard (NPS) of the Airbus A350. Now we look at the economic performance of the A350-900 versus the Boeing 787-10 on the world’s busiest long-haul route, London Heathrow to New York JFK.
We compare the economics with a nine abreast economy cabin and what difference the NPS and a 10 abrest change for the A350 produces.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
October 6, 2022, © Leeham News: The early years of 2000 saw new engine programs launched for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus response, the A350.
Substantial differences in the life of these aircraft programs made the engine programs develop differently. It was about throttle push or not.