Airbus and Boeing are both planning to hit the marketplace with completely new narrobodied aircraft in the mid to late 2030s, but what will they look like? Will they have pilots?
Nothing is set in stone, but it appears most likely that airframes will still be variants of the wing-and-tube format. And, at present, power unit technology is still predicted to be hydrocarbon-fuelled, but using 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at service entry, driving higher-bypass rotors, whether ducted or unducted, with a promised 20%-30% increase in fuel efficiency. Both manufacturers still promise net-zero emissions by 2050.
Airbus’ NGSA (Next Generation Single Aisle) aircraft is expected to feature long, slender wings with folding wingtips (above), whereas Boeing, working with NASA, is trialling the “transonic truss-braced wing” (see below), also with a very high aspect ratio and folding wingtips
Surprisingly, no-one is talking specifically about artificial intelligence (AI). That may be because, by then, it will be impossible to tell, in integrated aircraft management systems, where AI ends and passive software begins. Meanwhile Airbus and Boeing both say they plan to keep pilots “in the loop”, and in an executive role. At this point a two-pilot crew is the model they are working with, but how long that will remain the status quo is not clear.
France-based Thales, which supplies the integrated modular avionics on the Airbus A320NEO, sees the NGSA offering the flightcrew a high degree of integral assistance.
“That aircraft will incorporate a lot more help for the pilots through automation, or recommendation, so they are assisted at any moment of the flight – whether it is a normal phase or if there are issues,” according to Yannick Assouad, executive VP of the avionics division. Flight management systems will assist pilot decision-making, going further than today’s Airbus Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor (ECAM) system or Boeing’s Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System (EICAS), by proposing solutions with supporting information, but leaving the decision to the pilots.
If there is a difference between the two manufacturers’ approaches to future flight deck systems human/machine interface, it is subtle. Boeing emphasises pilot-assist technologies designed to keep the pilot central while improving training, and “human-machine teaming”, whereas Airbus focuses on automation and autonomy to reduce workload and improve safety through use of assistance systems. Airbus talks of “making the aircraft the pilot’s smart assistant”, one that can anticipate and act.
Technology advances include more efficient, higher bypass engines, including open fan designs; long, high aspect-ratio foldable wings enabling significant aerodynamic efficiency gains while maintaining manoeuvrability during taxiing and docking at high density airports; also, next-generation batteries to enable hybrid architectures where electricity is increasingly used to support propulsive and non-propulsive functions aboard the aircraft, and increased use of advanced lightweight materials and integrated systems.
It hasn’t surprised anyone in the industry to hear rumours – via the pages of the Wall Street Journal – that Boeing is working on the design of a new narrowbody jet, because it’s what everyone – including Boeing – knows the manufacturer should have done instead of launching the 737 Max.
The confidence in that statement is completely un-influenced by hindsight.
Now the Max has been purged of the ghastly design mistake that was MCAS (manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system), and Boeing has radically overhauled its corporate safety culture under a new leader – former Rockwell Collins engineer CEO Kelly Ortberg – the 737 series can once again trade on the lazy confidence that comes from the fact that – with all its faults and its antique technology – it’s a known quantity.
As a result the 737 is selling well, but nothing like as well as its competitor the Airbus A320 series.
The first 737-100 entered service in 1968, initially to fly the routes that the larger 727 series trijet was too big for. Its basic control technology was – and still is – just-post-war, except that in the latest versions the power-assisted cranks and pulleys are overlaid with electronic flight instrument systems and flight management computers to the extent that the pilots could almost believe the aircraft is fly-by-wire. They know, however, that they themselves are the flight envelope protection.
The industry needs a new-technology narrowbody competitor to the A320, and if Boeing doesn’t supply it, perhaps a development of China’s Comac C919, Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet 100, or a new product from Brazil’s Embraer will fill the gap.
Boeing’s first fly-by-wire airliner was its highly successful 777 widebody, which entered service in 1995 with virtually no birthing pains.
In 2011 it launched the 787 Dreamliner series, also highly commercially successful, but suffering from multiple early problems, some of them still being worked on.
Right now Boeing is struggling to re-launch the 777 as the 777X. The fact that it had a planned 2019 in-service date, but now its launch customer – Lufthansa – will not receive it until 2026, suggests how difficult a task bringing an entirely new narrowbody (the 797?) to service readiness may yet be.
The challenge is always to deliver a safe, trouble-free product, but the staggeringly advanced, fully-integrated electronic technology by which the aircraft and all its systems will be managed and controlled, plus the fact that there must be fallback systems that the pilots can access easily if it all goes wrong, mean its service entry will not be quick.
Look beyond this to the fact that the new systems will inevitably employ artificial intelligence, which makes passengers – and even engineers – nervous when it comes to managing safety-critical systems, and the size of the challenge becomes clear.
So the venerable 737 series will be with us for many years yet.
It will not be long before accident investigators reveal the reasons why the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 crew felt they had to commit to a flapless, gearless landing on runway 19 at Muan, South Korea. But the reason so many people died was not the landing as such, but the fact that the aircraft (HL8088) collided with a very hard obstruction just beyond the runway end.
That collision broke up the hull and caused a conflagration. What was the obstruction, and why was it positioned on the runway extended centreline only about 200m beyond the runway threshold?
It looks as if it was a concrete anchorage for the Instrument Landing System (ILS) antenna array. ILS antennae are often just beyond runway ends, but they are normally designed to be frangible so any aircraft that collides with them suffers only minor damage. This was hard. Very, very hard.
The sequence of events that led to this accident began with the aircraft approaching runway 01, cleared to land, but the crew elected to go around just after ATC had warned them of a potential birdstrike. It looks as if a birdstrike did, indeed, take place, and the crew declared a Mayday emergency shortly after that.
The crew then elected to land on the same runway but in the opposite direction – on runway 19. This was not much of an issue because the wind was very slight and the visibility was excellent.
But when they returned for the fatal landing on 19 they touched down with no flaps and no landing gear. Why? Perhaps because the birdstrike caused the right engine to fail, and all or some of the hydraulics with it. And the gear and flaps are hydraulically powered.
We don’t know yet, but we will know soon.
Meanwhile the touchdown was as good as a flapless/gearless touchdown could be: wings level, nose not too high to avoid breaking the tail. But being flapless, the airspeed was very high – probably around 200kt.
Look at the video of the landing run. The aircraft slid the full length of the runway with the fuselage, wings and engines substantially intact, and with no fire. It slid over the end still going fast – maybe 70kt or so, but still with no further substantial damage to the structure and no fire.
Then the aircraft hit the obstruction about 150m beyond the hard runway overrun, but until impact it remained substantially undamaged and fire-free. At impact, the hull buckled and broke up, the wing fuel tanks were ruptured and instantly exploded into flames. The wreckage came to rest just beyond the obstruction, near the wire perimeter fence.
If the obstruction had not been there, the aircraft would have slid through the antenna array, across the level ground beyond it, and through the wire perimeter fence. It would have come to rest with most – possibly all – those on board still alive.
We will soon find out the whole truth about why the landing took place as it did. But because the accident killed all on board except two of the cabin crew, those answers will be almost academic. The question to answer is: what was that obstruction, and why it was there?
There are those who attribute Boeing’s ongoing quality control scandals to its decision to move its HQ out of its Seattle engineering base to Chicago in 2001. Others blame the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas for a dramatic change in company culture in favour of cost-cutting and upping shareholder pay-outs.
Kelly Ortberg, formerly of Rockwell Collins, is Boeing’s new CEO
Whatever the arguments, Boeing knows it has to get a grip, and part of the plan has been appointing a new CEO who started on August 8. Kelly Ortberg is a 64y-old engineer, and was recently CEO of avionics company Rockwell Collins, where he built a reputation for being a “man of the people” as well as a diligent executive with an eye for detail.
He says he is going to base his family in Seattle, and explains why: “Because what we do is complex, I firmly believe that we need to get closer to the production lines and development programs across the company. I plan to be based in Seattle so that I can be close to the commercial airplane programs. In fact, I’ll be on the factory floor in Renton today, talking with employees and learning about challenges we need to overcome, while also reviewing our safety and quality plans.”
It was only four months ago, on 16 April this year, that Boeing’s board blocked a shareholder proposal calling on the company to move its HQ back to Seattle. The question now is: will moving back to Boeing’s historic base and its main assembly plants be the silver bullet that will slay the company’s demons? Sceptics abound, but it seems the new CEO is not one of them.
The HQ move 23 years ago was a result of priority shifts driven by the merger with MDC, but it reinforced the culture change away from engineering prioritisation by locating the board 2,000 miles from the engineering front line. As if that wasn’t enough, in 2022 Boeing moved the HQ another 1,000 miles east to Arlington, Virginia, closer to Washington DC, lobbying opportunities, and the Pentagon.
So what? With today’s communications, distance should be no barrier to good management.
Well, that might be true for many big companies, but for an engineering-based manufacturer producing complex, high-tech machinery for a safety-critical industry, this move physically separated the engineering from the managers, accountants and policy-makers. The expression “safety-critical” – in the case of the airline industry – is not a piece of marketing-speak, it is a crucial selling point for the operators. In the early 2000s when fatal accidents happened significantly more often than they do now, airline reputations could be broken by a single crash, and they knew it.
Of course it’s not as simple as that. It never is. Much has happened to the commercial air transport and aerospace industries in the 27 years since the Boeing/MDC merger. The need for corporate adjustment to today’s business environment would have driven changes anyway.
To understand the forces at play around the turn of the 21st century, its helps to look back to the late 1970s, when the process of US domestic air travel deregulation – set in motion under the Carter and Reagan administrations – brought painful change to US airlines in the form of unfettered competition. At that time the US domestic airline industry alone represented 45% of the whole world’s air travel activity.
It took a couple of decades for the industry to adjust fully to deregulation, in the process waving goodbye to giants like Pan American and TWA, and ushering in a process of consolidation among the survivors that saw names like Eastern Airlines, Braniff, Continental, Northwest and multitudes of others swallowed up.
A little later, and more gradually, deregulation within the European Union single market began, and by the mid 1990s early examples of today’s ubiquitous low-cost carriers were spawned both sides of the Atlantic.
About the same time, aircraft manufacturing consolidation in Europe resulted in the creation of what would become a powerful multinational consortium, Airbus Industrie. Its gentle beginnings in the late 1960s led to the entry into service – with Air France in 1974 – of the world’s first twin-engined widebody, the A300. It was unique and very good, but conservatism among potential buyers meant it sold slowly. Nevertheless, its arrival signaled change, and its engineering standards would see the eventual demise of the confident US slogan “If it ain’t Boeing I ain’t going”. Gradually it became clear that the USA was no longer unchallenged as the world’s supplier of big jet aircraft.
Today, however, Boeing and all the other manufacturers should be laughing all the way to the bank. Air travel is doing well. By 2019, the year before the global covid pandemic hobbled air travel everywhere, the size of the global airline fleet and the volume of world demand for air travel had grown to be a multiple of the size of the 1990s market. Now, in 2024, covid is under control, the global demand for air travel is powerfully resurgent, and that demand shows no sign of being tempered by economic dark clouds nor environmental considerations.
If the industry and business environment are so different now, why the persistent calls for Boeing to get back to its roots? The manufacturer’s serious underlying problems became dramatically visible when, in 2018 and 2019, two of its new 737 Max aircraft crashed out of control, killing all on board. One crashed in Indonesia, one in Ethiopia. The cause of both accidents was a control software change developed by Boeing to modify – in a modest way – some of the new 737 marque’s handling characteristics.
External aerodynamic data input to the system – known as the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) – came from sensors near the aircraft’s nose that measured the aircraft’s angle of attack (a crucial measure of the wings’ lift-generating performance), and MCAS accordingly applied nose-down force – if required – by adjusting the horizontal stabilisers at the tail. But in both crashes, damage to the external sensors meant they sent incorrect signals to the MCAS, and it repeatedly pushed the nose down despite the pilots’ control inputs. The pilots did not know or understand what they could have done to counteract the nose-down force, and the aircraft dived to fatal impact.
The crux of the matter is that, in designing the MCAS and its associated sensor hardware, the manufacturer had ignored a basic maxim that aircraft designers are expected to adhere to, like the Hippocratic Oath for medical doctors: Boeing had not designed the MCAS to “fail safe”. That is, to work out what failures could occur, and ensure that if they did fail it would not lead to disaster. This could be done either by duplicating or triplicating the system and setting up a voting system to isolate a fault, or designing the system so the effects of failure can easily be overcome by other means. Boeing ignored this philosophy, and its only excuse at the time was that it did not see the MCAS as a safety-critical system.
The two official accident inquiries (Indonesian and Ethiopian) and the many parallel US institutional post-mortems uncovered shocking evidence about attitudes at Boeing – and at its overseer the Federal Aviation Administration. After the crashes it took about three years to discover that Boeing did not have a formal safety management system (SMS), a jaw-dropping fact that must have related to a belief within the company that although everyone else needed one, Boeing didn’t. It has one now.
For those who, like me, had watched Boeing for nearly 50 years as an aviator and professional aerospace journalist, this was breathtaking. It was not the Boeing we thought we knew.
That question again: would a move back to Seattle cure all the ills?
The Boeing Field, Renton and Everett locations around Seattle wield a powerful symbolic and historic influence, and a move there would signal a faith in the engineers, mechanics and Boeing traditional values. Ortberg clearly knows this. But what of the philosophy that drove the HQ relocation to Chicago, and eventually to Arlington? Does that need to die too?
At the time of the Boeing/MDC merger, Boeing’s Phil Condit remained the CEO of the merged company and MDC head Harry Stonecipher was appointed chief operating officer. Stonecipher, together with former MDC chair John McDonnell, owned a larger shareholding in the merged company than the senior Boeing men. The MDC influence on subsequent developments was dominant.
Soon after the HQ move to Chicago, Stonecipher confided to the Chicago Tribune: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.” He was signalling the developing business philosophy of the new era: shareholders were king. Despite the banking crash of 2008, which should have imparted a message, that philosophy prevails today, along with CEO remuneration packages that launch company chiefs into a different galaxy from the one that their employees and customers inhabit.
Meanwhile Ortberg says he is moving his family to Seattle, with Boeing Commercial Airplanes, but the corporate HQ looks as if it is to remain in Arlington. How does that work? And will Ortberg, the “man of the people”, inhabit the same galaxy he does now?
Hundreds of airline pilots and cabin crew who have had their health permanently damaged by neurotoxins in aircraft cabin air joined a three-day multinational conference in late June to hear about the latest technical and legal solutions to the problems they face.
Hosted in London, England, the online Aircraft Cabin Air Conference drew in speakers and delegates from all time zones. Developments revealed at the event include a new blood test that scientifically confirms exposure to the specific organophosphates in jet engine oils that cause the harm by leaking into the engine bleed air that ventilates the cabin.
Also revealed was a new regulation to aid exposed crews and passengers: the US Cabin Air Safety Act. The purpose of the Act is to “improve the safety of the air supply on aircraft”, and it requires that all flight crew, maintenance technicians and airport first responders are to be given training – at least annually – on how to respond to “incidents onboard involving smoke or fumes”.
Meanwhile, in recent years, many medically harmed crew-members have – individually – been financially compensated by their employers for consequential health damage, but the air transport industry as a whole is still able to turn a blind eye to this fully understood phenomenon.
The reason the industry – the airlines themselves and the aircraft and engine manufacturers – appear to get away with tolerating such a recurring phenomenon is simple. Whenever they are challenged in the courts over cases of human health damage caused by contaminated cabin air, the companies settle out of court with the plaintiffs, who desperately need the compensation money because their career – as well as their health – is in ruins. So, the court does not get as far as delivering an actual verdict on the harm, the cause, or the blame.
Meanwhile a US law company, Littlepage Booth and Athea, has assembled a formidable body of technical and medical evidence on the effects of contaminated cabin air while representing harmed individual clients. The specific evidence these lawyers have gathered implicates only Boeing. That is purely because – they say – Airbus is a more complex legal task to take on in the USA.
Ironically, the only modern airliner in service today that does not use engine bleed air for air conditioning and pressurization is Boeing’s own 787, the most recent entirely new aircraft off its production line. The company explains it has abandoned the bleed air system in the 787 for fuel consumption reasons. But the 787 – also uniquely – does not use bleed air from its auxiliary power unit (APU) for cabin air ventilation, although there is no fuel consumption advantage in so doing. Law company partner Zoe Littlepage confirmed that the body of evidence against the manufacturer may be extensive, but until a trial has gone all the way through the courts and a verdict is reached, the status quo will remain.
The organophosphate contamination of cabin air is caused when aero-engine oil and/or hydraulic fluid leaks into the cabin air conditioning system, the air supply for which is drawn from the jet engine compressors. This contamination is not supposed to happen, but from time to time “fume events” occur when an engine bearing fails and the vaporized synthetic lubricants are “pyrolized” – partially burned – by the hot compressed air – and mixed into the cabin air that the pilots, cabin crew and passengers breathe. There is no filtration of this “bleed air” supply, and no detection systems to warn those on board when contamination is present. There is, however, usually an unpleasant smell, and sometimes visible smoke.
Pilots and cabin crew are more at risk than passengers, because even undamaged oil seals are not perfect, and there is constant leakage of the heated oil vapors in the bleed air into the cabin air at a very low rate. In some individual crew, the inherent toxins can slowly build up in their metabolism through repeated exposure, and because “aerotoxic syndrome” is still not legally recognized by the authorities, non-specialist medical doctors are unlikely to make a correct diagnosis of the resulting symptoms.
The authorities claim these very low rates of leaked fumes are acceptable, but that cannot be so because there is no designated rate or dose of these organophosphate-based neurotoxins that is defined as acceptable.
Fume events, on the other hand, are potentially dangerous to all. Passengers, however, are not generally warned of the risks when an event has occurred, and frequently the occurrence is not reported. And if – later – passengers suffer symptoms like persistent excessive tiredness, dizziness or “brain fog”, they may not connect their problems to their flight, and their doctor is unlikely to diagnose the problem accurately.
Very soon – perhaps this week – the US Federal Aviation Administration is expected to declare Boeing’s 737 Max safe to fly again in America’s skies, lifting nearly two years of compulsory grounding.
Such an event would normally be a subject of press fanfare, but Covid-19’s near-immobilisation of commercial air transport activity worldwide has rendered the Max’s long grounding almost invisible to the non-specialist media and the public.
The airlines have been able to work not only without the 387 Maxes already delivered, but without the additional 450 that have rolled off Boeing’s Renton, Washington production line since then – only to be delivered straight into desert storage.
The changes being applied – at the FAA’s behest – to this latest version of the highly successful 737 series are partly to correct design flaws that allowed two notorious fatal crashes to occur, but some additional modifications will bring the type fully in line with modern safety regulations that this marque had previously been permitted to avoid under “grandfather rights”.
Once the Max fleet had been grounded, it made sense to incorporate not only the changes required to make it safe, but also improvements that would prolong the marque’s commercial desirability for as long as possible. That is essential because Boeing’s next product in this market sector will be entirely new, and will not be launched for some years.
The truth is that the 737 line has reached the end of its viable development life, but given the fact that it has been in continuous production since 1966 through four iterations, that should not be too surprising.
Basically, the Max marque was intended as a stop-gap while Boeing came up with a “new mid-market airplane”, but when the Max hit the marketplace it was astoundingly successful. Its price was right, its economics excellent, its delivery guaranteed, and it was a known and trusted quantity. And all this despite the fact that it is an old fashioned, mechanically controlled machine surrounded by digitally controlled competition.
This relaunch of the Max into an airline world decimated by Covid-19 is going to be watched with bated breath, not just by Boeing, but by the whole industry.
Public perception of the aircraft is key. Will they see it as safe? Will it be safe?
As soon as the FAA announces the detail of its decision, the answers will be here.
Today I was replying to a message from a good friend in Maryland, and found that I’d written to him what I have wanted to put up here for a while.
He had picked up on something I wrote in FlightGlobal/Flight International a month or so ago about Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun’s thoughts on the kind of control interface that would be best for pilots flying Boeing’s next clean-sheet-of-paper aeroplane in tomorrow’s skies.
This is what I suggested to him:
“I don’t actually know what Boeing will do with the pilot’s “joystick” or yoke equivalent in its next-generation aircraft. My observation that you picked up on was based entirely on the musings of Boeing’s new boss Dave Calhoun when he suggested they might need to have to do a complete re-think of how to tomorrow’s pilots should interface with tomorrow’s aeroplanes.
The thing about the airline piloting job now is that it has drastically changed. Even aircraft originally designed in the 1960s, like the 737 series, in their latest versions put just as many computers between the pilots and the flying control surfaces as Airbus does with its FBW fleet. So any remaining efforts to fool the pilots into believing that the control feedback they feel is the real thing is just artifice. And like any part of the system, the artificial feedback can fail and thus mislead.
The only aeroplanes in which Bob-Hoover type stick-and-rudder skills were ever really needed is manually controlled aerobatic machines flown in perfect VMC during a display. Modern combat aircraft, built for aerodynamic instability so as to be manoeuvrable, have had FBW sidesticks for decades, and the pilot’s main task is to direct the mission and its defence, not to use finely-honed skills to keep it flying. The stick is just a device for pointing such an aircraft where you want it to go.
In an airliner you were never supposed to handle it as if you were Bob Hoover flying a display. Nowadays, if you have to fly it manually at all – and 99% of the time you are told not to – your job is ABSOLUTELY NOT to fly it by the seat of your pants, it’s to select the attitude/power combination you need to get you elegantly from where you are to where your passengers wish to go. I can tell you from experience, a spring-loaded sidestick is an easier device than a yoke for selecting an attitude, and as for selecting power, throttle levers do the same everywhere, back-driven or not.
So I’d guess Boeing probably will go down that track. Pilots who still need to be flattered by being presented with controls that look like the old fashioned ones but do not work like them are no longer in the right job!”
No pilot/aeroplane interface is perfect. But choosing the best one for the next Boeing is going to be an interesting job for Calhoun.
Learmount.com 