Airbus’s next all-new aircraft – a successor to its ubiquitous A320 – might not initially have a hydrogen-fuelled engine, but it has more definition and solidity than preliminary artistic sketches might suggest.
Speaking to FlightGlobal ahead of the Paris air show, chief executive Guillaume Faury laid down his thoughts on the airframer’s future aircraft line-up, its hydrogen prospects, and its strategy for the defence sector.
He insists the company is “fully focused” on preparing the launch of the next-generation single-aisle jet by the end of this decade, with extensive behind-the-scenes activity complementing various research projects exploring potential technological advancements.
“We are not converged in selecting this or that technology,” says Faury. “Especially when it comes to the engine architecture – which has a lot of implications on the aircraft design because you’re not [dealing] with the same airplane if you have an open rotor [on one hand] or a conventional geared turbofan [on the other].”
He says Airbus is in “pre-project mode” for the new aircraft. “We’re in the early days but it’s not sketches and stylish drawings – we’re really doing hard work, spending a lot of money, working on decarbonisation, light weights, optimising aerodynamics, those sorts of things.”
This work is covering not only the decision on selecting technologies – some of which have made, Faury indicates, at least for less-critical aspects – but other vital areas including preparation of the production system, the “rebuilding” of the balance sheet of Airbus and suppliers, and the ramp-up trajectory.
He says Airbus wants monthly A320neo-family production stabilised at 75 aircraft, for which the company is maintaining a 2027 target date, before launching the next-generation single-aisle.
Airbus has been analysing a range of technologies which could work their way onto the aircraft. It is jointly de-risking with CFM International the proposed RISE open-rotor engine, assessing its integration, and preparing tests to validate fuel efficiency.
The ‘Wing of Tomorrow’ programme has been exploring several possible technological advancements with an experimental wing platform – such as folding wing-tips, to enable single-aisle spans of some 45m (147ft 6in) – while the ‘eXtra Performance Wing’ project is studying active control for load alleviation.
How many of these concepts will be shortlisted for the next-generation single-aisle aircraft has yet to become clear. “We’ve not made all the selections, especially for important choices like engine architecture,” says Faury, while teasing that some decisions have been made.
Airbus’s line-up of models has shifted substantially in the last decade, its tight product family expanding to become more diverse: introduction of the A320neo, the rise in popularity of the A321neo and its extension to long-range variants, addition of the A220, service entry of the A330neo and A350 – with a freighter in development – and termination of the A380.
The configuration and market positioning of the next-generation single-aisle is the “big game” in Airbus’s future model range, says Faury.
He indicates that the aircraft is likely to be “a bit more centred on what is now the bulk of the market” – the A321neo subfamily – with a stretched A220 taking over the space occupied by the A319neo and A320neo.
“As we transition platforms, as we move forward, we will be trying to ensure greater cockpit commonality – in particular for the A220 – to the rest of the business. Because the A220 comes from Bombardier, and is less integrated in the man-machine interface consistency that we have on the A320, A330 and A350.”
He says the A220 is “probably not yet fully optimised” and Airbus has “not yet deployed all the capabilities we can” on the type.
“When we look at the evolution of our product families, the natural trend is to grow upward, not downward,” says Faury. “That’s what we have in mind for our products.”
Airbus has already hiked the range and capacity of the A321neo – with the A321XLR the latest iteration – and Faury says the airframer will also apply the same rationale to the widebody sector and “look at what is beyond” the A350-1000.
While Airbus had originally considered an optimised shrink of the A350, designated the -800, the plan was abandoned in favour of the A330neo.
Faury says the airframer is not interested in reviving the smaller A350. “The natural trend is more to look at the bigger [aircraft] and, in view of the [Boeing] 777X coming maybe one day to the market, we would be looking more probably at the upper end of the spectrum rather than the lower end.”
Airbus had previously shelved a possible A350 stretch beyond the -1000 – an aircraft unofficially dubbed the A350-2000 – about a year before it axed the A380 programme. It had seen no immediate market appeal and also stated that a stretch would probably demand evolution in engine technology.
Faury’s priority with the A350 programme, however, is the ramp-up of monthly production to 12 aircraft by 2028, which depends on Airbus’s acquisition of crucial A350 work packages from Spirit AeroSystems when Boeing takes over the US firm.
Spirit manufactures the A350 central fuselage at Kinston, North Carolina, but Faury says the loss-making company is a “bottleneck” in the twinjet’s production. Taking over the Spirit work – which also includes A220 wing production in Belfast, and a number of secondary sites – is the subject of a three-year integration plan.
Splitting out the Airbus work is complex. “There is not a single answer,” says Faury. “Each and every site has a different situation.”
Kinston’s IT services, for example, are delivered from Spirit’s facility in Wichita. “And we’re not acquiring Wichita, so we need service-level agreements for some time before we find other ways of doing the IT access.”
Wichita also deals with supply-chain management, so a similar agreement will be needed until Airbus is managing the supply chain itself.
“If you look at Belfast, it’s a different situation. The complexity is in the physical carve-out on the site between the Airbus activities – the ones we’re buying – and the ones that remain for Bombardier and other customers,” says Faury.
Airbus has an integration and turnaround plan for each site. “It’s not really about whether we’ll be slightly profitable, slightly loss-making,” Faury points out. “What we’ll be looking at is the production rate, because these are big enablers for the ramp-up of the A220 and A350.
“The main reasons we’re putting our hands on those sites is not to be a better manager of the production per se, it’s to make sure we manage the ramp-up.”
Faury says the issues at Spirit have led to a year’s delay for the A350 production trajectory to 2028 but adds that this is “something we can digest” through a “steeper ramp-up starting a bit later”. Airbus expects the Spirit acquisition will also assist its effort to lift monthly A220 output to 14 aircraft next year.
While the A320 successor has edged Airbus’s proposed hydrogen-powered airliner out of the near-term spotlight, Faury is keen to stress that its hydrogen programme is “not on the back-burner”.
“We’ve done one loop of technological development and we’ve come to the conclusion that… we can do a hydrogen [aircraft] today. We could launch a hydrogen airplane,” he says, but such a design would be uncompetitive compared with conventional architectures.
“We’d be wrong to come with a product that can be certified but would not provide competitive benefits.”
Faury says the company has opted for “another loop” of technology to reach the point of having a hydrogen-fuelled aircraft that can offer better economics.
He adds that launching development of a hydrogen design would be “meaningless” given that the ecosystem is immature – unable to deliver hydrogen “at the right quantity, at the right price, at the right time” – and not developing as fast as Airbus had expected.
“We’ve decided to delay, but delay doesn’t mean ‘put on the back-burner’,” he says. “It’s just going to come later. We continue to believe it’s very important and very likely that hydrogen will play a part in the industry moving forward, probably in second half of this century.”
If Airbus represents one half of a duopoly on the commercial side, the defence business operates in a more complex environment.
Because of issues around national sovereignty and maintaining domestic industrial capabilities, Airbus Defence & Space is one of multiple military aircraft manufacturers in Europe.
But can this status quo sustain? After the beginning of the Ukraine war and, more recently, with the rise of a more protectionist USA under President Donald Trump, there has been pressure for Europe’s industry to slim down and present a less-fragmented front.
For instance, Roberto Cingolani, chief executive of Italian aerospace champion Leonardo, has on several occasions stressed his belief that consolidation in the segment is a vital step.
Faury is more circumspect, noting that as a corporate entity “Airbus is a consolidation itself”, bringing together some of the military aerospace capabilities of France, Germany, and Spain.
There is also a form of consolidation through joint programmes, he adds: “When you look at what an A400M looks like, it’s already a product where the supply is a consolidation; it is one manufacturer to serve several countries.
“And the demand has been consolidated in the sense that countries came together to specify and contract a given plan.”
A broader version of that can be seen with the Eurofighter consortium in which Airbus D&S works alongside BAE Systems and Leonardo to serve the fighter needs of Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. (France, of course, went its own way with the Dassault Aviation Rafale.)
While the land and naval defence industries are “still very fragmented businesses”, Faury thinks this is less the case with aerospace.
“Now, I am not suggesting there is not room to do more, we offer already, as Airbus, an ability for a large number of countries to come together to us and do something that is a joint product for several countries.”
Space remains an exception but here Airbus, Leonardo and Thales are attempting to join forces and offer a combined satellite infrastructure and services business, “which could be similar in principle to what was achieved in missiles with MBDA or in civil aviation with Airbus”.
Of more benefit, he argues, would be the “consolidation of demand in Europe – a less fragmented number of programmes, products and systems”.
What to make, then, of the combat aircraft sector where two rival sixth-generation programmes are currently in the early stages of development?
Airbus is collaborating with Dassault and Indra on the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) programme for France, Germany and Spain, while BAE, Leonardo and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are aligned through the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) for Italy, Japan and the UK.
Both efforts foresee the development of a sixth-generation manned fighter, alongside supporting unmanned ‘loyal wingman’ or remote carrier vehicles, new weapons, and a combat cloud.
Although he does not think the two programmes can be joined, Faury believes they should move closer together to save costs.
“I’m not suggesting today those programmes would be merged into one programme at this stage – I don’t think that’s realistic – but I say that there’s maybe a way to bring them closer together,” says Faury.
This would see the two efforts “sharing common avionics, common engines technologies, common systems”, he says.
“There are ways of doing things together moving forward without necessarily going from two projects to one project.
“My personal view is that there’s not room for spending so much money in Europe on technologies which are very expensive.”
But with multiple companies and national interests already in play developing those supporting technologies it is unclear how such a rationalisation could be achieved.
On the engine side alone, Rolls-Royce and counterparts from Japan and Italy are developing next-generation powerplants for GCAP, while MTU Aero Engines and Safran Aircraft Engines have formed the FCAS-facing EUMET joint venture, with Spain’s ITP Aero also a contributor.
Faury stresses that such duplication is less of an issue during the current technology development phase but “it becomes more important as we come close to committing big tickets, big money”.
Meanwhile, Airbus continues its occasionally uneasy relationship on the New Generation Fighter element of FCAS with project leader Dassault.
Currently in Phase 1B – technology development – negotiations should complete later this year for the Phase 2 work and the assembly and flight test of a demonstrator aircraft in around 2028.
Faury says the current stage “has been uneventful” largely because the previous wrangling centred on workshare, which once agreed, became a non-issue and “we have been able to deliver the work”.
But with the negotiations for Phase 2 at national and industrial level looming, there is a danger of further sharp exchanges with his Dassault counterpart Eric Trappier.
The discussions between the partner nations are the first critical element which should define “what they want to be doing, by when, and for what type of needs”, in other words “what is the capability we want to deliver”.
Only once this is defined will industry have an idea of how work on the programme could be divided up. However, Faury says given the progress with the workshare in Phase 1B “it would be a bit strange to move away completely or reverse the cards and do something completely different”.
Meanwhile, the in-production A400M airlifter faces a different set of challenges as the backlog continues to shrink: a little under 50 examples remained to be delivered at the turn of the year.
Annual output is currently around eight to 10 units “so we are not at the point where it hurts”, says Faury.
However, the airframer is seeking “visibility” by the end of the year from the programme’s partner nations and “export prospects” on future orders – “how many and by when” to allow it “to plan production for the back end of the decade, the beginning of next decade”.
“The next 12 months are quite important in gaining the visibility to continue to extend the skyline of production of the A400M.”
Faury sees the potential to achieve a book-to-bill ratio of 1 – that is matching its eight-to-10-unit output with the same number of new orders, both from the programme partners and export prospects.
To date, Airbus has booked just eight export sales for three customers: Malaysia, Indonesia and Kazakhstan.
“We see prospects with that type of volumes or more, a few on the short-term, some on the mid-term. We think there’s a market for feeding up to eight to 10 airplanes a year for the next few years.”
Although there is an overall lack of clarity on timing, Faury says that overall “we feel quite comfortable that the outlook will remain stable for a few years”.
On the helicopter side, meanwhile, Airbus is taking the first tentative steps towards another collaboration in the military market with civil rival Leonardo.
The pair already work, along with GKN/Fokker, through the NH Industries venture that builds the NH90 11t-class helicopter, but NATO- and European-level projects seem destined to push them together on the development of a next-generation rotorcraft.
However, the challenge is that both are promoting different technologies: Airbus favours a compound architecture, while Leonardo is a tiltrotor afficionado.
Faury does not see this as an issue, or at least not yet. “We are at the research stage,” he says. “We are progressing the two technologies side by side, or shoulder to shoulder… and the outcome will tell us where are the benefits, or the priorities, for one or the other.
“And would European customers select together one architecture or the other, I think that could be logical for the two companies, Leonardo and Airbus, to be in co-operation mode for that product, to be agnostic to the technology.”
