Podcast: Is Airbus Running In Place?

Aviation Week editors discuss why an Airbus next-generation single-aisle program launch is not imminent despite technological progress.

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Transcript:

Joe Anselmo:  

Welcome to the Check 6 Podcast. I'm Joe Anselmo, Aviation Week's editorial director.

Airbus has not shared a lot of good news recently about its future aircraft programs. The pending launch of a new single-aisle aircraft keeps getting slipped to the right, and in February the company pushed back development of a hydrogen-powered airliner by 5-10 years. So Airbus' leaders, needing to convince the world that they're not running in place, gathered 130 journalists and influencers from around the world in Toulouse for a two-day technology summit. There they revealed initial concepts of what a new single-aisle aircraft could look like, including their preference for open-fan engines.

Critics say Airbus and Boeing are slow-rolling development of new airplanes while their shareholders cash in on massive order backlogs. The duopoly counters that the technologies needed for game-changing improvements simply aren't ready for prime time.

Aviation Week's Jens Flottau, who leads our commercial aviation team, was at the Airbus Summit and joins us to share his thoughts. Also on the podcast is chief technology editor Graham Warwick, who listened in on the sessions from his base in Washington, DC. And we will be joined by technology editor Thierry Dubois, who is based in France and closely follows sustainability and Airbus' hydrogen project. Jens, what did you see at the summit and were you impressed?

Jens Flottau:            

I saw a lot of the technology projects that Airbus is currently working on. The automatic taxi trials they showed us, I was even able to drive the truck that they're using as a kind of a simulator for the A350, on which this is going to be tested as well. They had an exhibition for hydrogen projects, the ZEROe, some of the wing work they're doing. The message was very, very clear. Airbus wanted to show us and us, that's 130 people, journalists, and actually a lot of influencers. So that also shows that they wanted to reach a broad general audience.

They clearly wanted to show us that in spite of what you said, delaying ZEROe, not moving quickly on next-generation narrowbody, they are in the game, they are sticking to their promise to drive aviation's push into more sustainable flying and that they're not stepping back from the targets. Keep in mind, IATA just said that the net-zero 2050 target may need to be revisited because SAF isn't moving fast enough and so on and hydrogen is going to come in too late for their target anyway. So there is this general feeling that the industry is slowly moving away from these targets and Airbus was very clear that it is not.

Joe Anselmo:       

Thierry, it's been a long time since Boeing or Airbus launched a new clean sheet narrowbody. The 737 is actually older than me, I think it was launched in 1965. The A320 entered service, I think in 1987, or first flew. Airbus and Boeing say that this inaction to roll out new models isn't about greed or complacency. They say the technology simply isn't ready for game-changing moves. Are you buying that?

Thierry Dubois:    

Not really. There are several technologies, including some developed by Airbus under the Wings of Tomorrow program that could be implemented in the next few years. So maybe they would not bring a double-digit improvement, but it's much better than waiting another 5-10 years for the next aircraft. So it's hard to buy as an argument, and the issue of credibility of the entire industry was raised at the highest level you can imagine in Europe, in terms of aviation, meaning the executive director of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, Florian Guillermet. He was speaking at the Clean Aviation Annual Forum in Brussels and he said that If aviation doesn't stick to its 2035 target for significantly reduced emissions, more precisely at the aircraft level, that would be minus 30% of emissions. "So if the industry doesn't meet those targets, credibility will be at stake."

Joe Anselmo:     

And you didn't hide your disappointment at the demise, not the demise, but the delay, of the [Airbus] hydrogen project.

Thierry Dubois:      

Yes, and I am perplexed by the extra period of time, the extra time that Airbus will spend working on hydrogen. So if they put their money where their mouth is, this means they will work for another 15 to 20 years on hydrogen technologies before the aircraft actually enters service. That's an unprecedented development time for a commercial aircraft. By the way, I'm using the word development, I should be more careful. It's results to technology. But anyway, it's a very long time working on technologies before an aircraft enters service.

Joe Anselmo:           

Graham Warwick, you get really excited about new technologies. Was there anything you heard in the summit that excited you?

Graham Warwick:    

Well, yes and no, right? So the hydrogen one is interesting, right? Because I kind of think they were backpedaling a bit because they announced that the postponement earlier this year, and it was really taken as being almost like it's off the table. It was quite a negative reaction to what they did. And it's like, hydrogen's dead, blah, blah, blah. Well, they kind of tried to resuscitate hydrogen. Said, "No, we're still working on it." Blah, blah, blah. The interesting thing for me was, the reason they gave for postponing was they wanted to produce a commercially competitive aircraft. They didn't want to make another Concorde, I think is how they said it.

Well, if you think about it, when they launched ZEROe, they didn't talk about competitiveness. They talked about making a disruptive move, getting hydrogen into the aviation ecosystem. And I think what's happened over the last however long it's been, you know, three, four, five years, is it's the typical large OEM thinking that’s come to bear. So the R&D folks look at hydrogen and think, we can get a minimum viable product into the market in 2035, 100 seats, 1,000 nautical miles, but it won't have the same range as a gas turbine aircraft, blah, blah, blah. And I think what's happened is that the big boys at Airbus have said, the product guys at Airbus have said, "There is no way we are going forward with an aircraft that can't compete head on with conventional airplanes in the timeframe this thing's going to come along." And they've just said, "Give it more time, develop the technology further, and bring out a competitive aircraft."

I think that's a really big change. None of the startups are talking about being competitive. They're talking about disrupting, about getting hydrogen going. And so I think Airbus has said, "It's not our job. Our job is to come in with an airplane that we can put up against a conventional airplane and make commercial sense." So I think that's a big change.

The second thing is, it was mentioned many times but never really highlighted, they are really interested in hybridization. So I think that they are going to, almost certainly, when this new single aisle comes, it's going to have some degree of hybrid electric propulsion hybridization. And what they're talking about is putting an electric motor onto the engine so that you can move energy around. You can take energy out of the airplane, out of the engine, you can put energy into the engine, and then you can reduce the edges of the envelope, the transients that take the engine to the edge of its capability and are the things that do the most damage to the engine. If you can remove those transients, you can operate the engine in a much more comfortable area. And you can extend life, you can get some degree of efficiency improvement, but fundamentally you make the turbine. It doesn't have to work as hard, if you have this energy storage and some way of putting energy in and out of the engine.

 So they're clearly thinking that's a big -- whether it's a fan, whether it's turbofan, hybridization is a big part of it. So I was actually quite encouraged that they really are thinking about that. That would be a huge step for aviation, even if it looks like a tiny step, if you actually bring electric into the propulsion somewhere or other in a middle of the market, single aisle, thousands of airplanes type of program, that's a huge shift.

Joe Anselmo:              

See Jens, they did say something that excited him. Thierry?

Thierry Dubois:      

 Yes, to Airbus’ credit, there is something that they presented that was quite impressive, I have to say, the Racer demonstrator. It's Airbus Helicopters, so it's not a commercial fixed-wing aircraft, but it's a compound helicopter. So it's a mix between a fixed-wing aircraft and a helicopter. It's closer to a helicopter, actually. It was created under the Clean Sky 2 program, so Clean Aviation predecessor, and it proved that a different architecture demonstrator is feasible, and in only a few years, it was relatively fast by aviation standards. And it's been flying for, I can't remember, is it six months or one year? Probably about around six months. And apparently the engineers are very happy and the pilots are very happy with it, with the performance in terms of speed and fuel efficiency. So that's quite encouraging in the way that again shows you can change the architecture of an aircraft and demonstrate it in a few years. And the aircraft came, but it flew from Marans to Toulouse.

Joe Anselmo:     

Jens, you talked about how they unveiled the concept for the next generation single aisle, which I should say is not going to be for at least 10 years, right, probably longer before we see something like that in service?

Jens Flottau:     

Probably longer, yeah.

Joe Anselmo:       

Share with our listeners some of the details. As you said, there weren't a lot, but there were some conceptual things there, right?

Jens Flottau:        

Basically they're trying to follow three different concepts for now. They're starting three different concepts right now. One is conventional ducted engine, low wing. The other one is open fan, low wing, and the other one is still low wing, but still the engines at the rear of the aircraft, which would be a departure from the traditional Airbus aircraft architecture. The main message that I took away from this is, they don't know much about the aircraft, they said, "We don't know what it's going to look like. It could be completely different from what we're showing you." They showed some sketches of a tube and wing aircraft, but their clear favorite on the engine side is the open fan.

 They actually had GE Aerospace, Muhammad Ali, at the show presenting his view of the engine, giving an update on development and testing. And Thierry maybe can talk about that a little more. He had some interesting details to share. But Airbus is clearly on the path of trying to make the open rotor work, which has huge implications obviously for the market as a whole. MTU, part of the Pratt consortium, has said that it will go for a ducted, conventional iteration of the GTF for the next generation narrowbody. And obviously you can't design an aircraft for an open fan that can also accommodate a ducted fan, that doesn't work.

So if Airbus really insists on the open fan, does that mean that Pratt needs to also look at open fan technology to secure a place on the aircraft? Or maybe Airbus decides it doesn't need two engines because it's got 60, 65% of the narrowbody market anyway. If you look at GE Aerospace, the market share is even higher. It's 100% on the MAX and it's whatever, 70, 67% on the neo. So maybe they are in the position to just say, you know what, we'll just go with one engine.

Thierry Dubois:      

 With CFM, that's GE and Safran.

Jens Flottau:          

Yes.

Thierry Dubois:      

 I couldn't help.

Graham Warwick:     

So there were a couple of things that were interesting. These artist impressions are incredibly vague and sort of simplistic, but they did of course feature the long span wing with the folding wingtips, which they're developing under their Wing of the Tomorrow program. But when I was listening, there was no mention of what's going on under the Extreme Performance Wing program. No mention of making it active, you know, where that wing would move in flight to control gusts. So I think as in its first form, it's just going to be a passive, you know, a land folding wing taxi in, taxi out, fold the wing back down, and then it's fixed, you know? So now in a later stage, obviously they could make that active.

Also, you know, our colleague Guy Norris has talked a lot about the installation issues with open fan, and that's why they've got this tail versus wing thing because there are advantages for an open rotor. There are advantages to being under the wing and disadvantages, and the same of the tail. So if it's under the wing noise is more of an issue, it's the tail noise is less of an issue. But what you did see in the concepts is this idea of a gull or an arched wing, which is a bit like what the A380 wing is like, where the wing goes up inboard quite steeply to give that clearance to the ground for an open rotor, which would be a very large diameter. So you saw those sort of things in these concepts.

Thierry Dubois:          

On the open fan, Mohamed Ali, the GE Aerospace senior VP of engineering, shared something encouraging in terms of testing. He said that "The digital models they used for the open fan were extremely accurate when compared to wind tunnel tests." Which means that in the future, the development of the engine could be relatively fast and they could rely maybe more heavily on digital models. Of course they would still use wind tunnels, but that may accelerate things.

Joe Anselmo:          

Airbus isn't operating in a vacuum. They have a great advantage in single aisles as you noted, but Boeing's still out there, it just got a big shot in the arm on the military side last week, winning the F-47 contract. What is Boeing doing compared to Airbus and how do they differ?

Graham Warwick:     

Boeing would never have done an event like the Airbus Summit. It was a very, very slick, outwardly focused event. It really wasn't focused on the aerospace press, who really dig into the details. This was, as Jens says, this was focused at the widest possible audience they could reach. That's not the Boeing that we see at the moment. Even if they're doing this work in the background, they're not doing anything to promote that work, establish themselves as being a technology leader. So that's a huge difference. You couldn't have seen an event like this take place in the U.S.

Joe Anselmo:            

But they are looking at a truss brace wing, right? That a lot of people are skeptical about, and other things.

Graham Warwick:    

So truss brace wing is there, it's in the mix. It's a bit like open fan, it has to prove itself. I mean, Airbus is very enthusiastic about open fan, but it has to prove itself. It will have to fly on the A380 test bed and it will have to demonstrate what it promises and overcome all the installation issues that go with a totally new type of engine.

One of things you have to remember, the Airbus Summit, the people up there are the research and technology people. As Thierry said, they made it quite clear, they're not the people who decide what the product is. As they try to explain it, they're the people who are putting up the menu of ingredients, but it's the product team that do the recipe that produces an aircraft. And they have said time and time again, they have no idea what the product people are going to decide. They're trying to give those product people the widest range of options that they possibly can. But the product side, a bit like on hydrogen and things, the product side may say, "No, no, that market, it's not ready. That doesn't buy its way on." So all they can do is tell us what they're working on. They cannot yet tell us what will make it onto the airplane. It's exactly the same with truss braced wing. It's there, it's being tested, it has to prove itself, but nobody can tell if it's going to be on the airplane until the product people design an airplane.

Jens Flottau:         

And the product people are saying, we have this huge backlog on the Airbus side. We're not in any hurry to move. I mean, they're not saying this officially, but I would say that's the truth. Boeing has its own issues that we've written and talked about a lot, and Embraer is still pondering whether to move at all into that space. So it's a very slow process. I think it's slower than justified by the technology readiness. As Thierry says, I think technology would be there sooner than they are planning to use it. But that's not the only factor that plays into this whole game. So there we are.

Joe Anselmo:        

Final question. Graham mentioned disruptors. I think one of the most prominent is JetZero, the blended wing body project that's sort of a dual military tanker and airliner, very different aircraft. But the fact that Airbus is moving so slow and Boeing is moving slow, does that open the door wider for a disruptor to jump in?

Thierry Dubois:   

That's the hope of European aviation, especially the Clean Aviation joint undertaking. For a couple of years they've put a new emphasis on startups, and maybe they don't say it that way, but maybe they don't say it this way, but because of the slow speed of progress at established manufacturers, they are hoping that a startup may come with something disruptive. And someone from the Cambridge University Clean Aviation Annual Forum even said that, "Aviation may be waiting for its Tesla moment." He didn't phrase it exactly that way, but that gave the impression that aviation was waiting for something to happen.

Graham Warwick:   

So I agree. The reason that JetZero exists at all is because Airbus and Boeing are not moving fast enough. I mean, what JetZero is trying to do, a startup trying to do a $12 billion aircraft development program to bring a totally new 200-seat aircraft to market, it's just unheard of and it's never ever been done. But they're encouraged by people inside and outside the industry who are frustrated at what Airbus and Boeing are doing.

Some of Airbus and Boeing's biggest customers are saying they're not moving fast enough. So Delta, big customer, it's not putting money into JetZero, but it's encouraging JetZero. They tell you there's no shortage of money available in the private market to do this if they can cross the credibility barrier and if the investor can be convinced. A; that it's going to be a successful product, and B; that Airbus and Boeing won't put them out of business within six months like they did with Bombardier and the C Series. So, it's clearly a moment in time when there is an opportunity, but there are many, many ways that that opportunity could be dropped. If JetZero doesn't do what it says it can do, or if there's some sort of global financial shift that makes the money really hard to get a hold of.

 And it is interesting what Coteri says, "Clean aviation," which has been since the beginning of Clean Sky, Utterly dominated by the major European OEMs. The money has gone to Rolls, Safran, Airbus, Leonardo, for years and years and years. And now in a small way they're saying, “Okay, no, there's another piece to aviation.” ZeroAvia was there at the conference talking about that. These are people who are the disruptors. They're small disruptors, they're starting in a small way, but they're getting recognition. And they're getting recognition because the big guys are not doing anything. So it's really now, can those little guys cross over and get the bigger investment dollars from the really big institutional and other private sources that can get this moving? And we're still A way off of knowing whether that's going to happen or not. But the opportunity has opened.

Jens Flottau:       

And there's also a very near term example of how people are not moving, Airbus in this case, it's not moving. A220. We've been talking about the stretched version of the A220, I don't know how many years, five years or so. It's still not there. But the reality is there's big customers. Delta wants it, Air France wants it. A lot of airlines want it as soon as possible. But the reality is Airbus can do whatever they want because what will Delta do? What will Air France do? If they don't get the stretch, they'll probably buy an A320 neo. So who cares? I mean, if you're Airbus, you couldn't care less. And that's the problem.

Joe Anselmo:           

Well, unfortunately we are out of time, but we will definitely continue this discussion in the coming months ahead. But for now, that is a wrap for this week's edition of Check 6. A special thanks to our podcast editor in London, Guy Ferneyhough. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to Check 6 so you never miss an episode. If you found today's discussion helpful, consider leaving a rating or review. Better yet, share this episode with a friend or a colleague. That's all the time we have for now. Thanks for your time and join us again next week for another Check 6.