Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Boeing’s new fighter award moves away from money-losing fixed price contracts March 24, 2025
- Airbus still struggles to deliver planes on time March 24, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 14. March 21, 2025
- How good is the COMAC C919? March 20, 2025
- Boeing CFO Brian West: OK on tariffs for now, backlogs and inventories help March 20, 2025
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 14.
By Bjorn Fehrm
March 21, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why development has been slow.
Last week, we examined MTU’s WET engine concept, which utilizes a water capture process in a Turbofan to lower emissions, such as NOx, and reduce the water content in the exhaust, thereby reducing contrail risk. The week before, we looked at a similar concept, focused on a hydrogen burn process from Pratt & Whitney called HySIITE.
Both concepts capture water in the turbofan’s exhaust and can then release it in a way that avoids contrail generation. Contrails have garnered significant attention in recent years, as research has raised the possibility that persistent contrails can contribute as much or more to global warming than the CO2 released during the Turbofan combustion process in an airliner.
We will spend the next Corners digging deeper into the question of air transport’s non-CO2 effects that contribute to global warming. Contrails have the largest impact on these non-CO2 contributions.
Figure 1. The complex interaction of different heat radiation and blocking processes in our atmosphere. Source: The report “The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000-2018” by Lee et al.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 13.
By Bjorn Fehrm.
March 14, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why development has been slow.
Last week, we summarized the well-to-use efficiency gain of the Pratt & Whitney HySIITE engine process, which was announced in January. We found that with an expected 35% increase in engine efficiency, the liquid hydrogen chain, from the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen through liquefaction to burning it in the engine, used less renewable energy than if we used the same method to make Power to Liquid (PtL) SAF.
Pratt & Whitney was very clear in the presentation that the evolution of a HySIITE engine is a long-term project, with its possible use on the other side of 2040. There are just too many new components (heat exchangers, evaporators, etc.) that need development and maturation to think this is a near-term engine opportunity.
MTU’s similar WET engine concept, Figure 1, uses the same process ideas but with a different target. Here, the focus has been reducing emissions, like NOx and water content in the exhaust, to reduce contrail risk. This shall be achieved when burning jet fuel, SAF, and hydrogen.
Figure 1. An MTU WET engine with its straight core. Source: MTU.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 12.
By Bjorn Fehrm
March 7, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
Last week, we wrote about Pratt & Whitney’s announcement in January: their trials with critical components of their HySIITE engine, Figure 1, showed that they could increase the efficiency of a hydrogen burn engine by 35%!
It does this by intelligently using the water released when hydrogen oxidizes with the air’s oxygen. The water separated from the exhaust is reheated into steam and entered into the engine’s combustion, reducing NOx by 99.3% and increasing the engine efficiency by 35%.
Figure 1. A HySIITE engine with its backflow core part. Source: Pratt & Whitney.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 11.
By Bjorn Fehrm
February 28, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
Last week, we discussed the fact that Airbus has moved its hydrogen-fueled ZEROe aircraft into the 2040s and that it will be fuel cell based. It’s a bit of an irony that Pratt &Whitney announced major news for the alternative hydrogen burn alternative four weeks before. Let’s dissect what Pratt & Whitney announced.
Figure 1. Hans von Ohain’s first jet engine started on hydrogen in 1937. Source: Wikipedia.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 10.
By Bjorn Fehrm
February 21, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
Last week, we reviewed the present fallout of lower emission projects that have not reached their goals and where investors, therefore, have decided not to invest further.
There is a well-known project failing every month at the present pace. Some recent ones: Universal Hydrogen’s ATR conversions, Volocopter and Lilium’s bankruptcies, Airbus freezing the CityAirbus eVTOL (Figure 1) and pushing out the ZEROe hydrogen airliner, hibernation of the Alice battery aircraft, etc. There will probably be more in the coming months.
Airbus 2024 results: “A decent year in a challenging environment”.
By Bjorn Fehrm
February 20, 2025, © Leeham News in Toulouse: The headline uses the words of Airbus CEO Guillame Faury when he opened the presentation of Airbus 2024 results in Toulouse today. It was a session where Faury and the CFO Thomas Toepfer put in an effort to let all present international journalists and their online colleagues ask all questions and deliver honest answers.
On the business-as-usual side, the company delivered 766 aircraft, which was within the guidance, after a deep grab effort in 4Q, leading to low deliveries for 1Q2025. EBIT at €5.4bn and Free Cash Flow at €4.5bn were also within guidance.
In general, the Commercial airplane side was fighting specific supply problems during 2024, which might limit the ramp-up of A350s and A220s going forward, more of which below. Helicopters have now recovered from challenging times and delivered a solid result. Defense and Space are strong in Air Power (fighters, etc.), given the tense European situation, with Space going through restructuring, which might include mergers with other European space players.
The real news was the reasons for pausing the CityAirbus eVTOL program, according to Faury, “not only because batteries were not where they should have been but also due to the lack of a market for this type of transportation.” As the world’s largest supplier of helicopters, Airbus is a credible source for such a lack of market statement.
Faury also detailed what is happening on the Hydrogen side. Due to slower-than-expected progress in Green Hydrogen production build-up, deployment of preparatory Ground Support Equipment (GSE), and Transportation using hydrogen at the airports in their H2 partner network, Airbus has decided to push out the entry into service of a “commercially viable hydrogen aircraft” by five to ten years.
However, said Faury, it has made progress. “We have reached TRL 3 for the tecnobricks, which has enabled us to select the Fuel Cell path as the preferred way forward. This means these activities are continued at the present level or even intensified, but it also means other paths (read Hydrogen burn) are ramped down. Overall, it means a decrease in R&D spending for Hydrogen activities in the coming years.”
Read more
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 8
By Bjorn Fehrm
February 7, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
We have covered the progress of battery-based aircraft and hybrids, where the last Corner was about the most sensible hybrids, the mild hybrids. Now, we turn to hydrogen-fueled alternatives.
Figure 1. The operation of a PEM fuel cell. Source: NASA.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 7.
By Bjorn Fehrm
January 31, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
We have covered the progress of battery-based aircraft and hybrids, both serial and parallel hybrids. A couple of mild hybrids have a larger chance of success than the ones we described. We will look into these and then start looking at different hydrogen-fueled alternatives.
Figure 1. The LEAP-1A with auxiliary gearbox. Source: Safran Transmissions.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 6.
Bjorn Fehrm
January 24, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
We have covered why the progress of battery-based aircraft is slow and also described what to expect at the end of this decade and the beginning of next.
Now, we look at hybrids, an inherently more complex design. Upstarts are changing to hybrids after realizing that battery-only aircraft will not have useful range this side of 2030.
Figure 1. The Heart Aerospace ES-30 has passed the phases in the article. Source: Heart Aerospace.
Read more
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 5.
By Bjorn Fehrm
January 17, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to replace or improve hydrocarbon propulsion concepts for Air Transport. We try to understand why the development has been slow.
We have covered why the technical progress of battery-based aircraft has been slow. Now we look at what type of missions it can do this decade and beyond and why the limitations.
Figure 1. The Diamond eDA40 electric trainer. Source: Diamond. Read more