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Joe Anselmo (00:32): Welcome to the annual edition of Aviation Week's Flubs and Forecasts podcast. I'm Joe Anselmo, editorial director, and as we do every year at year-end, we bring together Aviation Week editors to talk about what they see ahead for 2026, but also to look back on what they thought they'd see in 2025 and how accurate they were. So without further ado, let's kick off starting with our executive editor for business, Michael Bruno. Michael, talk about flubs. Somehow you wiggled out of giving us a forecast for 2025. So I'm just going to have to ask you to look ahead to 2026 and what you see.
Michael Bruno (01:14): All right, well, it's because I'm brilliant and I just want to say that I knew that 2025 was going to be the most unpredictable, tumultuous year, and I just didn't want to make everybody else look bad by saying that upfront. But oh my gosh, if we look back, just kind of get in the time machine, go back a year right now, the world waiting for the second Trump administration to take office. The economy was slowing maybe or maybe not. Nobody was quite sure what was going on, whether there were going to be interest rate hikes or interest rate cuts. And we had all kinds of other questions going on in the world. What was going to happen with the Ukraine-Russia war? Was that going to be the winner, the winter where some winner was declared, or were they waiting for some secret plan from President Trump to come in and end it all?
(02:07): And then in the space side, it seemed like commercial space was still, everybody's attention was on what SpaceX was doing, and NASA would eventually get around to launching another spacecraft to the moon or something like that. Well, here we are at the end of 2025 and I would say that if anyone had made any predictions about what was going to happen, you were wrong because the commercial aerospace industry is doing really well, better than people expected. The defense industry is doing really well, better than people expected. Business aviation, MRO aftermarket space, whether it's commercial or government, everything everywhere in aerospace and defense is up. And if you had made that prediction at the start of 2025, you would've been wrong for many reasons. And we can talk about what happened with Trump taking office and tariffs and one big beautiful bill that suddenly adds $150 billion overnight to defense and space budgets, the DOGE, the attempt to streamline government and the effects there.
(03:20): What happened with tariffs, what's going to happen with tariffs. So I will try not to steal too many other people's thunder, but I'll go ahead and make my predictions for next year. So here we are on the commercial aerospace side. Everybody sees Boeing is doing pretty well. They're roughly at about 42 737 new production a month. And the goal is to stabilize that in the first quarter, get to 47 next year. And I think the quiet talk, the whisper talk is that Boeing will get to perhaps 52, maybe by the end of next year. I'm going to put myself in the camp of people who say it's going to take the first half of the year to get to 42 reliably. Then it's going to take all year to get to 47 737s. That's got knock-on effects about how well the supply chain catches up and how much inventory gets destocked out of the system.
(04:10): I think Airbus surprisingly is going to be doing better. I bet you that they're going to surprise people with not just their monthly production rate of A320. I think they're going to deliver ultimately far more aircraft than they were even expected to once upon a time this year. I think defense and space, it's going to kind of plateau for various reasons. There's going to be a lot of debate about where the defense budget goes in the U.S. and it's not going to look like one big beautiful bill happens every year. And then finally, in space itself, this is a horrible prediction to make because everyone's now making it, but we're going to see a lot more new public companies, space companies, particularly SpaceX, which is already in the news for an expected IPO initial public offering next year. But I think next year is going to resemble those two years of '19, '20, maybe '21, where we had a bunch of SPACs special purpose acquisition companies come on board. Now we're going to see a bunch of companies kind of do it the more old-fashioned way with IPOs, but there's going to be a lot more new companies for investors to digest next year. And that's it, Joe. Those are the bold predictions.
Joe Anselmo (05:21): Okay, well that's quite a setup Michael, and we will definitely be back next year to see how you did. Let's jump over to Lee Ann Shay. Lee Ann runs our MRO and business aviation teams. So Lee Ann, you did make an MRO prediction. You said 2025 is going to be the year of the engine. Everything's going to be about the engine more engine module swaps, PMA usage and more AI artificial intelligence applications in the aftermarket. How'd you do?
Lee Ann Shay (05:49): You know what? I nailed it, I got to say, but it's kind of hard to screw up the engine one because again, I'm going to make the very similar predictions. It's still going to be engine engines. Engine MRO is going to contribute 53% of all MRO expenditures and CFM alone will have 2,500 shop visits and smarter maintenance planning is not exactly AI, but MROs and the aftermarket have been investing a lot in technology. So some of those things are going to reap benefits to counter supply chain constraints, MRO constraints and airline MRO expenditures have gone up in 2025. So using artificial intelligence for things such as initial engine inspections, inventory planning, that's only going to increase on the business aviation side. More luxury flying, which is kind of going against business aviation the term. But at NBAA-BACE we saw two startups, Bond and Magnifi Air both launch for more luxury service. So we're expecting to see more of that and bonus depreciation in the U.S. expect more business aviation sales to continue. And I think the most interesting thing to watch on the biz av side in 2026 is can Gogo take on Starlink? They have emerged with their LEO system of connectivity, so will they make a dent in Starlink's business? We'll see.
Joe Anselmo (07:23): Okay, thanks Lee Ann. Well, you and Michael talked a lot about business. I think we should swing over to technology a little bit and we have three editors there to talk about it. We'll pick on Garrett Reim first and then follow him with Guy Norris and Graham Warwick. Garrett, your prediction for 2025 that it was going to be the year of truth for Advanced Air Mobility. A ton more announcements around artificial intelligence and greater use of software.
Garrett Reim (07:52): I think I did. I think I did okay. A little bit of mixed bag on some of it, but on the AAM side, I think it did pretty well. You saw Volocopter and Lilium really hit the fan and the struggle continues for some of the remaining companies. They're stretching out their certification timelines and go to market. I, so yeah, I think that one I hit pretty well. Definitely there's a lot of AI, or excuse me, artificial intelligence announcements, but that's sort of a low-hanging fruit. Anyone can make an announcement. There have been a lot of effort to use it in engineering processes, but I'm a little dubious about how much it's actually being used. So I think that was a bit of a flub. I think you're going to see it's a lot harder to integrate AI in the engineering process for safety reasons, accuracy reasons and so forth than it is in software coding.
(08:44): So I think people are going to keep trying that, but that's the adoption on that and the proving it out is going to take a little longer. And my predictions are a bit of a continuation of these trends. I think you're going to see AAM continue to struggle. The deadlines for a lot of these companies, self-imposed deadlines have been pushed back and the numbers have dwindled of players. I will be curious to see what happens to what we see as sort of the front-runners. This is the Joby, the Betas, the Archers. They're all publicly traded Beta most recently having its IPO. Will the markets continue to fund them based on the promise of what these companies could do or are people going to start scrutinizing more the actual, what they've actually accomplished and how close they are. So you may see a lot more scrutiny on the actual achievements of these companies, the certification and so forth.
(09:45): Sort of along that line, another prediction is that you're going to see more ramp-up of last-mile cargo delivery. You've got folks like Walmart with Wing Zipline, Amazon Prime, Uber Eats has got a partner. More and more people trying this. I would expect that the more drones you have flying in the air, the more opportunities for accidents and annoyance. So cargo drones delivering someone's burrito run into a power line or somebody pulls out their shotgun and takes a pop at one of these things because they're very annoyed. So that's something I'm keeping an eye on. And then my last prediction and we've seen this year, and I think it's going to continue and perhaps accelerate is the investment in European space, in European space industry is going to ramp up. Trump administration has been very reluctant to support Europe in some ways with intelligence, other defense guarantees. And so there's a lot of talk about space sovereignty and obviously Europe is feeling pressure from Putin's Russia. And so Europe has a very capable aerospace industry, but they have not necessarily been leaders on the space side. And I think that's going to change. You're going to see a lot more European space startups and more high-tech European space companies get funded and try bolder things.
Joe Anselmo (11:09): Thanks Garrett. Guy Norris. A year ago you were on this podcast and we asked what would happen in 2025. You said high-speed propulsion will be the area to watch a lot of activity in supersonics and hypersonics, Boom, Hermeus Aerospace. So how'd you do?
Guy Norris (11:28): Yeah, thanks Joe. I've been spectacularly bad at predicting things throughout my professional career and part of that is related to the fact that I'm just one of these people who's a hopeless optimist, always look on the bright side of things. And of course aerospace doesn't always go that way. But last year we did actually see some pretty remarkable milestones achieved in high-speed and supersonic flight, not actually that much in the way of speed yet ironically, but of course the Boom did fly the XB-1. Hermeus flew its Quarterhorse, although it was a very short demonstration flight and Venus flew the RDE-powered demonstrator. And of course, let's not forget, NASA actually flew its long-awaited X-59 low-boom demonstrator. So although nobody actually did anything in terms of really achieving that high-speed flight, all of the basic platforms were there were a lot of foundational work was achieved.
(12:33): So I think, I hate to say this, but I think high-speed flight will again be another major topic for next year for '26. I'll just break that very quickly down. I think the main thing to look forward to from our perspective anyway, is the continuing demonstration of rotating detonation engines or rotating detonation combustion question. The concept itself just lends itself to a lot of these projects and I think you've seen GE, Pratt & Whitney, of course Venus as we've already discussed, all looking at this. So I think you're going to see a lot more in that sort of area of constant volume combustion work in bigger engines. I think it's always just quickly worth looking at the mid-thrust commercial engine arena. That's today's LEAP, GTF. Those are the two big players. I think you're going to see a lot of the positioning for what's coming next in '26 CFM RISE program, which of course is looking to develop that next engine for the next generation single-aisle.
(13:43): You're going to see some big testing going on there. Integrated wind tunnel testing with Airbus Pratt's, talking very, very intensely with Boeing about what it could do with a next generation GTF and Rolls. Here's a thought. I think they're going to be building up their next generation demo, the UltraFan 30, and I think you're going to see the first signs of them corralling an industrial team to bring that forward in an industrialization way in the late twenties. And I think you'll see the first signs of that next year. And then my last one, commercial airframes hooray, 737 dash seven from Boeing. I reckon we'll finally get over the line in the summer and it will be certified. I'm hedging my bets on the dash 10 of course, and I think Boeing will take this idea of stretching the 777 dash nine seriously. So the 10X will be busy at Boeing and of course at Airbus the A350-2000 is going to be back on the agenda. So those are my predictions.
Joe Anselmo (14:47): Okay, well we're adding those to the record for next year. Graham Warwick in 2025, you predicted no VTOLs will certify in the U.S. this year and no service in the U.S. until 2027. Volocopter might certify in Europe. You said you predicted the first in-cockpit applications of AI could be certified in 2025, and you said not much progress in hydrogen. How'd you do?
Graham Warwick (15:16): I want to begin by thanking Guy. I will have the Monty Python song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" going through my head all day now. Thank you. Thanks to Guy. So it's easy to take pot shots at AAM. It was not a difficult prediction to say that they weren't going to certify in 2025. I'm going to tell you now, I'm not going to make a prediction for the U.S. AAM industry for 2026. I think they will still struggle through 2026. There was a lot of progress, a lot of testing, but it's just certifying is tough and they're not there yet. So I will make one prediction about AAM when we get to the end of this, but so on AI, I missed on the cockpit application, it's probably going to be this year, not last year. And that's again because it's the certification issue.
(16:13): They've been working it, they're getting closer and closer, but the regulators themselves are only just beginning to get their heads straight on how they approve AI in the cockpit. I mean, as Garrett's mentioned, it's kind of spreading everywhere, but in the cockpit you have safety-critical issues. You have, how do you assure the software in there that's just really coming into clear focus now and I do think that that will happen in 2026 hydrogen. Well, I mean obviously what we had was we had Airbus basically whenever it was February said they were going to push back their ZEROe any decision on their ZEROe two, which would push a service entry from 2035. They're pushing it out to 2040, 2045 because the technology isn't ready and the infrastructure needed to support hydrogen isn't ready. Now that had a really, really chilling effect on the market, I think more so than Airbus itself expected.
(17:21): I mean it really put the brakes on a lot of work across the industry on hydrogen and they kind of spent the rest of the year kind of trying to say, well actually we haven't stopped working on hydrogen, we're still working on it. We're just working on a longer horizon. So it's not gone away, but it's not anytime anything significant this decade. Basically what I did miss was the hybrid electric push that came this year. We had two startups launch out of stealth aiming for the top end of the regional market, 70 to 80, 70 to 90 seats saying that hybrid electric was the way to get ticket prices down, operating costs down and bring regional aviation back. We will have to see, but I didn't get that. Also on the military side, again, touching briefly on AAM there was a big push to bring hybrid electric into the eVTOLs that we know and love to address the market, the military market for logistics as Garrett says, particularly contested logistics as they call it in the military, which is trying to get into air bases that are under where airspace access is not completely clear.
(18:45): So there was a lot of activity there on predictions. I've already said I do think the AI will happen this year. I could be wrong again on AAM. The only prediction I'm willing to make on AAM is that China will outpace the U.S. this year. It is already kind of moving that way and I think they'll get there before the U.S. this year. And I'm going to add one final thing, which is something I didn't touch last time that are two kind of threats to aviation that I think if we leave it to market forces are not going to be addressed quickly enough. And that is runway safety and GPS spoofing. And I think that I'm going to put a prediction out there that something's going to happen this year in either of both of those areas that are going to make the regulators have to move and not leave it to market forces to deploy technology that will improve runway safety stuff in the aircraft that will tell the pilots there's something on the runway.
(19:42): And also just get some way to give pilots an alternative source of positioning so they can tell when their GPS has been spoofed that if you try and do that by a full certification route takes too long. I think there'll be some effort this year to try and find quick ways of getting solutions into the cockpit that will give the pilot another source of positioning to tell when they've been spoofed. So that's complete for me, a new area of prediction. But I think there's going to be, I hope it's not a bad thing, but I think there's going to be a lot of pressure in 2026 to move that from market forces to a much more regulatory-driven.
Joe Anselmo (20:18): Okay, thank you Graham. Moving on to defense. Brian Everstine, lucky for you. You weren't on this podcast last year. I'm not sure you would've predicted that you and most of the press corps would've been kicked out of the Pentagon this year. But what are your predictions for 2026?
Brian Everstine (20:36): Yeah, so for 2026 I wanted to focus on one specific kind of mission area and that has been the collaborative combat aircraft across all services and across some global services, but mostly focusing on the U.S. Air Force. We saw a lot of progress on that this year. Within the past couple of months we saw the first flight of General Atomics YFQ-42A, Anduril's YFQ-44A, and if you go back to the awards last spring, the downselect, it was really notable at the Air Force went with Anduril, relatively unproven in this space in General Atomics, but they left out the bigs, they left out the Boeings, the Lockheed Martins. So going forward, we have a couple big milestones in this area and I predict we will see a return of these bigs into the Air Force's increment two and potentially even a production contract award for its increment one.
(21:25): And I want to say this based on a few things that I've seen over the past several weeks. First, a couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to go to Mojave where Northrop Grumman Scaled Composites unveiled its Project Talent CCA, which we had previously reported on as internally called the Project Lotus. So the company explained when we were out there that they basically took their increment one proposal, which was really focused on the high-end, high-end capability stuff that Northrop's really known for. But that went a little too far for what the Air Force wanted to see. The Air Force wanted to be more affordable, look at affordable mass. So they basically said that they took their increment design and tried to cheap it down by doing fewer parts, making a little less capable to go within the cost projections that the services were looking for and we're supposed to see this fly next year.
(22:13): And secondly, back in September, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works unveiled its own new design called Vectors, which was still also very high-end, but looking at where they're seeing this space go with their analysis. And lastly, highlight what Boeing has been doing over the past couple months. Its MQ-28 Ghost Bat has been notching a lot of big progress. We saw them fire an AMRAAM just a couple of weeks ago down in Australia for an exercise. And one thing I thought was really interesting about a week and a half ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went to Naval Air Station Point Mugu for a little bit of a tour and right in the background was an MQ-28, which was kind of notable seeing this up at a U.S. test range when it is an Australian-owned asset. So I'm not saying that the Ghost Bat is going to be their basis for the increment two, but it is really showing the foundation that Boeing is building their offerings on. So I think that we're going to see a return of the bigs in a big way in CCAs next year.
Joe Anselmo (23:10): Okay, thank you Brian. Moving on to Robert Wall, our executive editor for Defense and Space. Robert, speaking of CCAs last year you predicted Anduril and General Atomics will fly their CCAs in 2025 and NGAD and FAXX programs will not merge. I'm not sure if one or both of the programs will survive, but I don't think anyone has the appetite for another merger program. A la F-35. How'd you do?
Robert Wall (23:40): Well, I did okay on the CCAs and we didn't get a merger of the FAXX program and NGAD now known as the F-47. I guess the big question now is will we get an FAXX program at all? We had the last Check 6 was the Defense Debrief 2025. So I'll refer our listeners to Steve's pretty bold prediction there on who that will have a down select and who will win and let you listen to that. So I will make my predictions for the coming year elsewhere. I'll start on the defense side. I'll venture that before the end of the year we have some sort of LOI-MOU agreement of some sort for Germany to partner with Britain, Italy, and Japan in some way yet to be defined on the Global Combat Air Program. I think things are just so bad right now on the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS SCAF program that in some way Germany will look elsewhere and France will do what France likes to do, which is go all French.
(24:55): And on the space front, I'll do two real quick. One, a bit of a good news potentially for Europe. Playing off what Garrett was talking about, I think one of the European launcher startups will reach orbit in 2026. There'll be great news perhaps with a caveat that of course we were hoping 2025 would be the year that happened. So maybe not quite at the pace they're looking for, but still showing progress. And then since Lee Ann so kindly beaten up satellite communications and broadband architectures and Starlink, I'll make a prediction, they're too slightly a different competitor, but I'm going to say that Amazon LEO, formerly Project Kuiper will not make their regulatory requirement to deploy roughly 1,600 satellites by the end of July. They've just started to deploy the constellation and it is going up with some pace potentially with more satellites still going up before year-end and likely actually more satellites going up before year-end.
(25:56): But they have a tall order to make that basically midterm target regulatory under their FCC requirements. I don't think that'll kill Amazon LEO. I don't think that'll kill the project. They are showing a lot of progress, which is largely the reason for it to have these milestone progress deliverables. But still it is something I think that'll happen that will not happen next year, so to speak. And it'll be something the company will have to deal with and they'll just show how intensely competitive that sector is. And it's just becoming more and more so as Lee Ann obviously also alluded to, so that's mine for 2026.
Joe Anselmo (26:35): You talked about space, Robert. Unfortunately Irene Klotz, our Cape Canaveral reporter couldn't join us, but anything momentous coming in space or just the same trend lines that we're seeing.
Robert Wall (26:46): I mean I think there's quite a bit of things that could happen. Obviously there's a question. Will SpaceX do an in-orbit refueling with the Starship, which will be they promised a few times? That is a big deal. I think. I don't want to speak for Irene here, but I think she's optimistic that will happen. Obviously we will have the Artemis II mission that's supposed to go in the spring. That'll be another big milestone. And to some extent we are really do some clarity on what is the future, what comes after the International Space Station. I think we know what the future of the International Space Station is. It'll come down. And so the question is what replaces for the U.S. human presence and laboratory work in low Earth orbit after that. So that is all something that the new administrator will get to wrestle with once he gets confirmed.
Joe Anselmo (27:49): And last question for you. For those of the viewers that didn't listen to your podcast last week, what did Steve predict?
Robert Wall (27:57): I think Steve went through the list of who's in the driver's seat between Northrop and Boeing. And then if you weigh out where it ends up, I think he thinks, we think that Boeing may have two sixth-generation fighter programs in its manufacturing development and manufacturing facilities within a couple of months.
Joe Anselmo (28:23): Well, thanks for putting that out there. We can drag 'em on next year now, see how it did. Thanks Robert. And rounding out our projections, Christine Boynton is here to talk about airlines. Christine, what are your key predictions for 2026?
Christine Boynton (28:41): Sure. Well, I do think we'll see improvements on the number of new aircraft deliveries, but continued and if not too pessimistic to say maybe still to emerge, supply chain issues will keep those below peak production levels. I do think airlines in the U.S. will see healthy load factors on constrained capacity in good demand. They are heading into 2026 with some optimism. They've seen bookings pick right back up after the record-breaking U.S. government shutdown ended. But we may be starting 2026 with another government shutdown near the end of January. So we could see some impacts to domestic demand in the first half of the year. But of course, we're also closely watching what happens with Spirit Airlines, which is going through its second. Its repeat restructuring process. And I think it's safe to say that in 2026, if not by the end of 2025, we could see an outcome there. So I guess my final projection is maybe an unoriginal one, but I do think an acquisition of Spirit by Frontier Airlines could be a likely result.
Joe Anselmo (29:46): Okay, thanks Christine. That wraps it up for everyone. I wanted to ask all of you, now that we've gone through everybody, is there anything we missed?
Garrett Reim (29:54): I would just add, and this is kind of adding to what Robert was saying, and I think Irene would've said that New Glenn's ramp-up next year or anticipated ramp-up could be a pretty big deal and that you actually have somebody getting close to competing with SpaceX, not quite blow for blow, but in a significant way, a lot of capacity. So we'll see if they can actually ramp up as they want, but the fact that they had a successful flight this year and are now showing their ambitions, I think could be really important.
Graham Warwick (30:30): Monty Python aside, any final thoughts from you? I'm going to just make one prediction
Joe Anselmo (30:35): That the Aviation Week will have all the news you need to know about next year. Okay.
Joe Anselmo (30:43): On that note, that is a wrap for this week's Check 6 podcast. A special thanks to our viewers and listeners for supporting Check 6 throughout the year. We'll be back on a regular basis in 2026 and look forward to seeing you then. Happy holidays to everyone and thanks for your time.
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