COMMERCIAL AVIATION Airbus flew the A321neo for the first time Feb. 9, from Hamburg, after a last-minute switch to an aircraft with CFM International Leap-1A engines rather than the Pratt & Whitney PW1100G-powered jet planned. The Pratt-engined A321neo is still to be delivered first, by the end of 2016, and the CFM-powered version by early 2017.
NASA’s leadership prepares to do battle in Congress to justify plans to ramp up funding for aeronautics research to pay for up to five large-scale X-planes to demonstrate future commercial-aircraft configurations and technologies.
Eight years after the Chinese government launched development of the Comac C919, the three big state airlines that must become the prime customers of the 158-seat airliner still hold only tiny orders for the type. Why?
Russia’s goal of reentering the narrowbody market hit a speed bump when the prototype of its MC-21 aircraft encountered problems related to manufacture of its composite wings.
By Southeast Asian standards, Vietnam is impressively modernizing its military. Singapore seems to be more than adequately armed for facing either of the two countries that surround it, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Commercial capacity in lower Earth Orbit is booming, but it’s unclear what payloads will use all that’s being built up by companies such as SpaceX, United Launch Alliance (ULA), Blue Origin, Arianespace, Energia, China Great Wall and India’s Antrix.
European planners are looking beyond the next-generation Ariane 6 to a completely new LOX/Methane engine that would dramatically lower production costs, with or without reusability.
A 2020 fleet target suggests China Eastern will need approximately 100 more aircraft to support expansion, plus an unknown quantity for replacements, and more again if it reduces the number of aircraft it has on lease. It is close to ordering Airbus A350s.
From rapid surveys of wreckage in remote locations to high-fidelity forensic reconstruction, drones are quickly becoming an essential tool for accident investigators who can use them.
Researchers find significant fuel savings in “minimal” turbo-electric concept, thanks to benefits of a boundary-layer ingesting,electrically driven propulsor and resulting weight savings from downsizing conventional turbofan engines.
Researchers led by Airbus regard distributed hybrid-electric propulsion as one promising option for a post-2035 commercial aircraft. Europe may fly a scaled demonstrator of this, or an alternative configuration, in 2022.
After a nearly two-decade decline in European defense budgets, an increase seems likely, driven in large part by Russian aggression and the so-called Islamic State.
