Do all airplanes look the same? Actually, they are very different.

Compared to the 1950s and 1960s, when there were all kinds of exaggerated creativity and a hundred flowers blooming, today's civil aviation industry seems to have reached a stage where it is too mature and there is not much innovation. The process and experience of taking a civil aviation flight now are probably not much different from 20 or even 30 years ago.

But beneath this apparent stability, the civil aviation industry is actually incubating profound changes. Let's take a look at what changes have taken place in the civil aviation industry in the past few years.

01

Global Civil Aviation Manufacturing Industry Landscape

Experiencing incentive shock

At the end of September 2022, the highly anticipated Chinese large aircraft, the COMAC C919 single-aisle trunk airliner, finally received the type certificate issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China after more than five years of flight test certification. It is expected that the first C919 will be delivered to the launch user China Eastern Airlines in a few days and will soon be put into commercial operation.

This means that China's first fully commercialized large passenger aircraft of its own brand has officially begun to participate in the fierce competition in the international aviation market.

The emergence of C919 has broken the stable monopoly of Boeing and Airbus in the civil aviation large aircraft market for the past few decades.

At the same time, the Russian aviation industry is once again challenging itself with its large civil aircraft, the MC-21, which will soon be delivered to Russia's Rossiya Airlines after experiencing a series of internal and external troubles.

Both MC-21 and C919 are single-aisle narrow-body aircraft, and they will compete with Boeing's 737MAX series and Airbus' A320neo series for the biggest piece of the pie in the civil aviation industry. The entry of new forces will surely bring new trends to the world's civil aviation industry.

Some are happy while others are sad. While challengers like COMAC are joining the competition with great confidence, other aviation manufacturing companies have chosen to withdraw from the civil aircraft manufacturing market.

Among them is Canada's Bombardier, which was once very close to becoming a large civil aircraft manufacturer. This veteran manufacturer, which once produced and operated a series of successful turboprop and jet regional airliners, and launched its own 100-seat jet airliner CS series in the early 21st century, completely divested its passenger aircraft production line in February 2020 and is currently focusing on the design and production of business jets.

Bombardier's CS series was purchased by Airbus and transformed into Airbus' A220 series.

The CRJ series of regional jets, which were earlier than the CS series, was acquired by Japan's Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation. Mitsubishi purchased the assets of CRJ in order to improve its own passenger aircraft portfolio.

However, after experiencing a series of R&D delays, financial difficulties, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world's aviation industry, at the end of 2021, Japan's Mitsubishi decided to abandon the SpaceJet jet regional airliner project, which had already entered the prototype test flight stage.

At this point, after spending nearly twenty years and countless amounts of money, Japan's dream of challenging the manufacture of large civil aircraft was once again shattered.

02

Passenger aircraft replacement is quietly completed

On the evening of December 6, 2022, local time, a Boeing 747-8 freighter was rolled out of the Boeing production line gate in Everett, Seattle, USA, marking the end of the 54-year production history of the legendary Boeing 747, known as the Queen of the Skies. The final delivery number remained at 1,574.

The Boeing 747 is the world's first wide-body passenger aircraft. The Everett production line was specially built for this giant four-engine aircraft. It covers an area similar to that of the entire Forbidden City and is one of the largest single buildings in the world.

The Boeing 747 is not alone: ​​almost a year ago, the production line of its challenger, the Airbus A380 superjumbo, also ceased operations after completing the 254th aircraft.

The A380 is also a four-engine jumbo jet, and its gradual departure from the Boeing 747 marks the end of the era of four-engine jet airliners in civil aviation history. In the field of wide-body airliners, the twin-engine, slightly smaller, but more economical Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 series have become the most common aircraft models for global passengers on intercontinental travel.

In the field of narrow-body aircraft, which are even larger in number, the Boeing 737NG and Airbus A320ceo series, which have been with us for a generation, recently completed the delivery of their last aircraft.

Although these classic models are still the most common aircraft at airports, with the rapid production and delivery of their successors, the Boeing 737MAX and Airbus A320neo series, more and more people will experience these new generation aircraft.

It should be pointed out that the Boeing 737MAX series has not yet obtained the resumption of flight permission from my country's civil aviation department, but in other parts of the world, it has resumed normal commercial operations and production and delivery work.

If you don't open your eyes and prick up your ears, you may not notice that you are on a new-generation aircraft, because this generation of aircraft is not much different from the previous generation, either in appearance or in the cabin interior.

The biggest difference in appearance is that the engine has been replaced with a turbofan engine with a larger bypass ratio, which means that the diameter is larger. The most notable feature of these larger-diameter engines is that they are generally 10%-15% more fuel-efficient than the previous generation. Lower fuel consumption means lower operating costs and less carbon dioxide emissions.

In addition, the new generation of engines generally have reduced noise levels, which is why you need to prick up your ears to determine whether you are riding on a new generation of passenger aircraft.

my country's C919 passenger aircraft also uses the same high-bypass ratio turbofan engine as the Boeing 737MAX and Airbus A320neo, so it is also an important model of the new generation of passenger aircraft.

03

Energy saving and emission reduction

Major challenges facing the world's civil aviation industry

As disasters caused by global climate change occur more and more frequently, words such as carbon emissions, carbon neutrality, and carbon peak appear more and more frequently in our daily lives.

Today, carbon emissions from the world's civil aviation industry account for about 2.1% of global carbon emissions from human activities and 12% of global carbon emissions from transportation. Although the proportion is not large, when averaged out to each aircraft, each flight, and each air passenger, the civil aviation industry is an undoubted major carbon emitter.

Currently, many airlines and aviation manufacturers have proposed the ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality in the next 10 to 20 years. If we continue to improve existing engines, develop a new generation every ten years, and reduce fuel consumption by about 10% each generation, the goal of carbon neutrality will be nothing but a pipe dream.

In order to achieve carbon neutrality in aviation, a new type of fuel is gradually becoming the focus of attention, namely Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).

This fuel is very similar to the commonly used aviation kerosene in terms of appearance, physical and chemical properties. At present, many airlines, including many airlines in my country, have used SAF for test flights, and the flight performance of the aircraft is normal.

However, this fuel does not produce carbon emissions, because carbon emissions are calculated based on the carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels, while SAF comes from non-fossil fuels and is synthesized from waste cooking oil, waste agricultural products and similar waste. In layman's terms, SAF is produced from waste cooking oil.

Bio-oil raw materials that can be used to produce bio-jet fuel. Image source: Sinopec Research Institute of Petroleum Processing

These raw materials are synthesized by plants through photosynthesis using carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and solar energy, so the use of SAF will not increase the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere.

At present, the production scale of SAF is still relatively limited, and the cost is much higher than traditional aviation kerosene. However, I believe that as more and more aviation companies join in and as production capacity increases, the price of SAF will gradually drop to a reasonable level and become the main booster for achieving carbon neutrality in the aviation industry.

04

New aircraft

From science fiction to reality

Sustainable aviation fuel addresses the issue of reducing emissions from existing turbine aviation engines.

From the 1930s when British and German aeronautical engineers created the first batch of turbojet aircraft engines to today, these engines have undergone nearly a hundred years of continuous improvement and have become the most important power source for helping humans fly. However, from thermodynamics to materials science, aviation turbine engines have gradually encountered bottlenecks, and a new aviation power is about to emerge.

Civil aviation giant Airbus is planning a huge new vision of future aviation power, including pure electric solutions for light and small aircraft, hybrid power solutions for medium and light aircraft, and hydrogen power solutions for large aircraft. Airbus is working with other industry giants such as Audi and Siemens to provide a complete set of solutions for the sky in 2050.

In June 2022, Airbus China R&D Center was established in Suzhou. The focus of this R&D center is on hydrogen energy, trying to solve various technical problems in the entire industry from manufacturing to storage, transportation and use. The subversion of the power solution will inevitably bring about new changes in the overall layout of aircraft. The appearance of aircraft, which has not changed significantly since the 1960s, is about to change.

This change has already occurred in some civil aircraft that may not be called "aircraft". These are the eVTOLs (electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft) that have been in full swing in recent years.

Maybe some eVTOLs look like large consumer drones, but this combination of aviation technology and artificial intelligence has changed people's relationship with aviation to some extent. In addition to emerging companies such as Joby, Volocopter, and Ehang, many traditional aviation companies including Boeing, Airbus, and COMAC have also joined the eVTOL R&D trend. Unmanned, intelligent, and seamlessly connected with urban ground transportation, eVTOL will open up new boundaries for the civil aviation industry.

Author: Rutan