Airbus envisions a successor to the A320neo emerging towards the end of the next decade, indicating that it would be designed specifically to consume sustainable aviation fuel.
Speaking during a full-year briefing on 15 February, chief executive Guillaume Faury said this next-generation single-aisle aircraft would be crucial to the air transport industry’s efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
Faury says the development of this proposed aircraft is a separate to its exploration of hydrogen propulsion through its ZEROe programme,
The next-generation single-aisle aircraft would arrive over the second half of the 2030s.
Faury says it will be based on a “new platform” and will not be a stretch of an existing variant. He adds that the airframer wants it to serve as an enabler to drive sustainable-fuel consumption.
“The successor to the A320 will be a short- to mid-range [aircraft] relying on burning 100% [sustainable fuel],” he states.
“That [aircraft] is front-and-centre to our strategy to enable carbon neutrality for aviation by 2050.”
