Pontifications: COTS and the KC-46A Aircraft Production Systems

Part 1 in a Boeing series about the USAF refueling tanker By the Leeham News Team January 17, 2022, © Leeham News: COTS is an acronym meaning Commercial Off the Shelf. It’s often a requirement for certain types… Read More

Pontifications: Bringing some reality on electric airplanes

Nov. 15, 2021, © Leeham News: The momentum and press about electric airplanes is spinning out of control. Earlier this month, there was an article from one of the most respected news organizations by a reporter who apparently… Read More

Hydrogen, electric and hybrid alternatives not here yet

By Scott Hamilton Sept. 25, 2020, © Leeham News: Commercial aviation has had 70 years to use jet fuel safely. It’s unclear how long it will take to reach the same level of safety with hydrogen, say Boeing…. Read More

Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of Hydrogen. Part 8. Fuel cell electric or Turbofan propulsion?

September 11, 2020, ©. Leeham News: In our series on Hydrogen as an energy store for airliners we look at whether we use an LH2 burning Turbofan as propulsion or as the EU study proposed, a Parallel Hybrid… Read More

Bjorn’s Corner: Fly by steel or electrical wire, Part 13

October 18, 2019, ©. Leeham News: In our series about classical flight controls (“fly by steel wire”) and Fly-By-Wire (FBW or “fly by electrical wire”) we continue our discussion of pitch stability augmentation systems when we have a… Read More

The new focus in aircraft development, the production

By Bjorn Fehrm October 17, 2019, ©. Leeham News: Over the last decades the focus for new airliner projects has been technological advancements in aerodynamics, structures, engines, and avionics. This has offered 15% efficiency gains for the new… Read More

Bjorn’s Corner: Fly by steel or electrical wire, Part 12

October 11, 2019, ©. Leeham News: In our series about classical flight controls (“fly by steel wire”) and Fly-By-Wire (FBW or “fly by electrical wire”) we continue our discussion of pitch stability augmentation systems when we have a… Read More

Bjorn’s Corner: Fly by steel or electrical wire, Part 11

October 4, 2019, ©. Leeham News: In our series about classical flight controls (“fly by steel wire”) and Fly-By-Wire (FBW or “fly by electrical wire”) we now discuss pitch stability augmentation systems when we need to improve the… Read More

Bjorn’s Corner: Fly by steel or electrical wire, Part 10

September 27, 2019, ©. Leeham News: In our series about classical flight controls (“fly by steel wire”) and Fly-By-Wire (FBW or “fly by electrical wire”) we started a discussion about the need for stability augmentation systems last week… Read More

Bjorn’s Corner: Fly by steel or electrical wire, Part 9

September 20, 2019, ©. Leeham News: In our series about classical flight controls (“fly by steel wire”) and Fly-By-Wire (FBW or “fly by electrical wire”) we discussed the FBW flight control system of Embraer’s E-Jet E2 series last… Read More