Commercial Aviation Highlights of 2023

Boeing handed over its 1,574th and final 747—a 747-8 Freighter—to Atlas Air on Jan. 31 after more than 50 years of production. The 747 first flew on Feb. 9, 1969, and the first aircraft entered service with Pan Am World Airways in January 1970.

NASA in January awarded Boeing $425 million in funding to develop the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator to flight-test the low-drag transonic truss-braced wing configuration at full scale. Based on a McDonnell Douglas MD-90 airframe and later designated the X-66A, the aircraft is planned to fly in 2028.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries terminated the SpaceJet regional airliner program in February after suspending development for two years. Failure of the program was attributed to an insufficient initial understanding of the complex type-certification process for commercial aircraft.

In the first of two massive orders announced by Indian carriers in 2023, Air India in February announced plans to buy 290 Boeing aircraft: 190 737 MAXs, 20 787s and 10 777Xs. In June, Indian low-cost carrier IndiGo placed a record order with Airbus for 500 A320neo-family aircraft.

It was a year of setbacks for next-generation regional turboprops. Embraer in May revealed that a potential new large turboprop would “slide at least to the early 2030s,” and ATR in June delayed a go-ahead decision on its future EVO family to 2025, both citing a lack of available engines.

In May, Lufthansa Group reached an agreement with the Italian government to acquire a 41% stake in state-owned carrier ITA Airways for €325 million ($351 million). ITA was founded in November 2020 and began operations in October 2021, replacing Alitalia as the Italian flag carrier.

China’s Comac C919 entered service with launch customer China Eastern Airlines on May 28, flying from Shanghai to Beijing eight months after the indigenously developed narrowbody aircraft was certified by the Civil Aviation Administration of China and 15 years after development was launched.

Yakovlev flew a new version of the Superjet 100 regional jet with Russian equipment replacing Western-supplied systems for the first time on Aug. 29 under the SSJ-New program launched in 2019. The first prototype is still powered by Franco-Russian SaM146 turbofans as the Russian PD-8 is still in development.

Russia’s United Aircraft Corp. formally dropped out of the CR929 widebody airliner program with China in August citing Western sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. China’s Comac is continuing development of a 250-320-seat twin-aisle airliner, now called the C929.

In October the EU adopted the ReFuelEU legislation mandating increasing use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Jet fuel suppliers are obligated to incorporate 2% SAF in 2025, 6% in 2023 and 70% in 2050. Starting in 2030, 1.2% of fuel must be synthetic electrofuel SAF, increasing to 35% by 2050.

United Aircraft Corp.’s Ilyushin Il-96-400M, a stretched variant of Russia’s Il-96 widebody airliner, made its first flight at VASO in Voronezh, southwestern Russia, on Nov. 1. The original Il-96 first flew in 1988, and development of the modernized, 390-seat Il-96-400M began in 2017.

A Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787 made the first commercial transatlantic flight on 100% sustainable aviation fuel on Nov. 28 from London to New York. Flight100 used a blend of 88% HEFA fuel made from waste fats and supplied by AirBP and 12% synthetic aromatic kerosene made by Virent from plant sugars.