Daily Insight: Tuesday 7 May 2019: Future Technologies – Software and Autonomous Aircraft

News

Both Boeing and Airbus have new narrow-body aircraft on the drawing board for the 2030 time frame, at which time new technologies are expected to provide another 10-15% in better fuel economy over today’s neo and MAX models.  But technology comes at a price, and the current MAX and neo models are having difficulty sustaining high lease rates in a low fuel cost environment against their predecessor NG and ceo models, which on an operating plus capital cost basis remain quite competitive.

To be incorporated into a new aircraft, technologies must be both efficient and cost effective.  In a series of insights, we will examine some of the technologies we will likely see in the next generation of narrow-body aircraft.  Our second topic is software and autonomous aircraft.