Leeham News and Analysis
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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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What’s the next new aircraft, Part 5
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.
Figure 1. The 13 airliners we look at in the series. Source: Leeham Co.
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.
What’s the next new aircraft, Part 4
By Bjorn Fehrm
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July 28, 2025, © Leeham News: In Part 4 of our five-part series on examining the potential next generation of aircraft in the coming decades, we take a closer look at Aircraft 5 to 8 in our Figure 1.
Figure 1. The 13 airliners we look at in the series. Source: Leeham Co.
These are the (5) GE, NASA, and Boeing hybrid airliner, (6) Airbus ZEROe hydrogen airliner, (7) Boeing’s NMA, and (8) the Boeing New Light Twin.
We examine the market for these aircraft, their technological challenges, and their potential future.
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.
What’s the next new aircraft? Part 3
By Scott Hamilton and Bjorn Fehrm
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July 24, 2025, © Leeham News: In Part 3 of our five-part series on examining the potential next generation of aircraft in the coming decades, we take a closer look at Aircraft projects 1 to 4 in our Figure 1.
Figure 1. The 13 airliner ideas we look at in the series. Source: Leeham Co.
These are the (1) A220-500, (2) Boeing’s Transonic Truss Brace Wing (TTBW), (3) Boom’s Overture Super Sonic Transport (SST), and (4) the Blended Wing Body (BWB) aircraft suggested by leading proponent Jet Zero.
What’s the next new aircraft, Part 2
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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.
Figure 1. The 13 new aircraft concepts that we study. Source: Leeham Co.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 21.
By Bjorn Fehrm
May 9, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to improve the emission situation for Air Transport. We try to understand why development has been slow.
Since we started in October last year, we have looked at:
- Alternative, lower emission propulsion technologies, ranging from electric aircraft with batteries as energy source, different propulsion hybrids, and new concepts for Jet-fuel and Hydrogen gas turbine engines.
- We have also reviewed recent research on the role of CO2, NOx emissions, and Contrails generated by airliners in global warming.
- Two weeks ago, we summarized the present situation around SAF, Sustainable Aviation Fuel.
Last week, we listed some base data about the present situation for Global Air Transport. We will now use this data to calculate the effect of air transport on global warming from the three alternatives.
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.
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.