One of the greatest climate-related engineering challenges right now is the design and construction of a large, zero-emission, passenger airliner. And in this massive undertaking, no airplane maker is as invested as Airbus.

At the Airbus Summit, a symposium for journalists on 24 and 25 March, top executives sketched out a bold, tech-forward vision for the company's next couple of generations of aircraft. The highlight, from a tech perspective, is a superconducting, fuel-cell powered airliner.

Airbus's strategy is based on parallel development efforts. While undertaking the enormous R&D projects needed to create the large, fuel-cell aircraft, the company said it will also work aggressively on an airliner designed to wring the most possible efficiency out of combustion-based propulsion. For this plane, the company is targeting a 20-to-30 percent reduction in fuel consumption, according to Bruno Fichefeux, head of future programmes at Airbus. The plane would be a single-aisle airliner, designed to succeed Airbus's A320 family of aircraft, the highest-selling passenger jet aircraft on the market, with nearly 12,000 delivered. The company expects the new plane to enter service some time in the latter half of the 2030s.

Airbus hopes to achieve such a large efficiency gain by exploiting emerging advances in jet engines, wings, lightweight, high-strength composite materials, and sustainable aviation fuel. For example, Airbus disclosed that it is now working on a pair of advanced jet engines, the more radical of which would have an open fan whose blades would spin without a surrounding nacelle. Airbus is evaluating such an engine in a project with partner CFM International, a joint venture between GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines.

Without a nacelle to enclose them, an engine's fan blades can be very large, permitting higher levels of "bypass air," which is the air sucked in to the back of the engine—separate from the air used to combust fuel—and expelled to…

Glenn Zorpette

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