Bold Predictions for the Aviation Industry (over the next 20 years)

Prognosticating how the industry will look in 20 years is not as hard as it looks. First of all, no one will remember this article in two decades (no repercussions), and secondly, aviation is typically a slow-change industry due to the safety requirements. If you are looking forward to finding me in 2038 and to either congratulate me for my Nostradamus-like abilities, or, mock me for my not-rooted-in-reality bad predictions, I welcome either one, and you will be able to find me on a mega yacht anchored off Bora Bora (or so I predict…).

The winds of change are coming from many directions, from electric and hybrid and supersonic and personal (pilotless passenger-carrying drone) aircraft, to space tourism, and to embedding more sensors into every nook and cranny of aircraft, as well as changes in airports (less so in the USA, more in other countries), ground support equipment, and we would be bereft to not mention the rapid expansion of 3D printing of aircraft parts. Let’s concentrate on the aircraft OEM landscape and see what the future holds. So, this should be fun. So, sit back, buckle up and enjoy the ride.

The Commercial Aircraft Duopoly Dissolves

Wow, major shake-ups in the landscape of the industry have completely upset the Airbus-Boeing duopoly, as well as affecting the makeup of the business jet and small aircraft markets. Part of this was due to airlines being tired of the lack of choice, and the other part by passengers on the lack of choice in how they travel and where and how long it took to get there.

Let’s start with Boeing and their divorce from Embraer. Boeing was the sugar daddy who back in 2018 wooed the sexy little Brazilian belle, despite her daddy (the Brazilian military) having doubts, and forcing a strong prenup agreement which held back the original family estate from the marriage (the defense portion of Embraer), this union went forward. Boeing and Embraer had dated on and off for years, so everyone knew this would be a rocky marriage that would not end well. In their time together, they created some beautiful offspring, effectively replacing the bottom end of the 737 line with newer models that the market reacted to well. But, the Brazilian entity wanted to expand more, towards larger aircraft, and this is where Boeing had enough and decided to separate. Embraer was able to use many of the lessons-learned from this experience to expand into the smaller twin-aisle market, although it will take more time to complete these larger aircraft into the 2040’s. The remaining part of venerable 737 product line suffered significant sales losses to the newly independent Embraer in the late 2020’s, which continued into the 2030’s, before Boeing decides to gamble on a “blended wing body (BWB)” architecture that is essentially an integration of the fuselage and the wings, which according to NASA and Boeing research is significantly more efficient than current design aircraft. The BWB is a hybrid shape that resembles a flying wing (such as the Northrop B-2), but also integrates in features from conventional aircraft. The BWB was in flight test in the late 2030’s, but had not reached the commercial market yet (although Boeing did develop smaller military variants of this already by this time).

Luckily for Boeing it had some other dalliances before the split, and one of them was buying Spike Aerospace, since it was the first to manufacture and deliver a working supersonic business jet in the early 2020’s. Boeing was able to assist with the manufacturing of the business jet to reduce its costs, but by the early mid-2030’s it was able to develop a 100+ seat version out of the labs and into initial testing. By 2038, it was still not ready for prime time, but, it is close. It allowed Spike to operate autonomously in the business jet arena, to great success, especially due to the assistance from Boeing. Mitsubishi abandoned its regional jet efforts and joined the Boeing-Spike team to provide additional financing and manufacturing capabilities to decrease the time to market. The oil price shocks of the early 2020’s began driving older legacy aircraft to the boneyards more quickly than anyone envisioned and forced all aircraft and engine OEMs to move faster into new more fuel-efficient designs. This also helped another Boeing-assisted entity, Zunum Aerospace, get moving faster with its electric aircraft. Boeing was able to scale up the smaller electric Zunum aircraft into a hybrid electric approach by which to create a new highly-efficient small single-aisle aircraft, but as of 2038, this could not be scaled up enough to larger aircraft effectively.

The target which Boeing went after but could not acquire was Boom Aerospace, with its 55-seat supersonic aircraft aimed at business/upper-class travelers. Boom began delivering this plane in the mid-2020s, but suffered from manufacturing and financial issues. This drove it to seek out a partner and Gulfstream/General Dynamics were a perfect fit (the US government would not allow a foreign entity to acquire a majority stake), with its deep pockets and high-quality manufacturing capabilities. By the mid-2030’s, the Gulfstream-Boom marriage produced various offspring, including higher-end supersonic business jets and made a foray into creating a 100+ seat supersonic commercial jet with assistance from Embraer. Every major airline placed orders for the Boom jets (especially since both Boeing and Airbus are well behind here) since not having this would doom operators to lose premium-paying customers to others who did. The economics of the airline industry were completely changed (more on this later).

The last 20 years has also been a whirlwind for Airbus. It married into a French-Canadian family which had constant financial issues, and over time was forced to take complete control the C Series product line, and using it to compete effectively against the Boeing-Embraer small single-aisle products. And, just as Boeing had done, it used the newer C Series to replace the bottom end of its smaller single-aisle aircraft, and eventually divorcing itself away from Bombardier in a mildly-acrimonious manner (in which Bombardier was now completely out of the commercial aircraft business, but it kept its business jets and turboprops businesses). A few lawsuits from the family (the Quebec government, unions, and others who had invested initially in the C Series), and Airbus was good. Airbus had also finally canceled the money pit known as the A380, and began work on a completely new radical design for a hybrid electric aircraft for short-haul single-aisle aircraft. It also began working on newer designs for the wide-aisle aircraft market, using a related blended wing approach as Boeing had (and exploring the dual fuselage which Boeing licensed from NASA/MIT but abandoned), none of which are available by 2038, but are in the works.

Airbus had earlier teamed up Aerion (which built a supersonic private jet by the mid-2020’s) and used the technology obtained here to launch the Concorde 2 (or Son of Concorde) to thrust itself into the supersonic race in the mid-2020s, with a market launch in the late 2030s. The fast lane in the skies is started to get crowded… China and Russia were not to be left out, with COMAC entering the market with several ‘legacy’ type aircraft, using engineering from Russian firms. These aircraft only garnered relatively small sales overall, mostly within the Chinese and Russian markets, as well as client states in Africa and the Middle East. Production issues hampered their wide-market acceptance, as did issues with global support. Attempts at developing a supersonic aircraft were coming along in the 2030s, but as of 2038, no production aircraft had been developed yet. Both countries demonstrated supersonic and hypersonic test aircraft, but commercial use of these would take longer for them.

The airline market was greatly affected by all of this, and this caused great upheavals around the world. Healthier airlines with a larger premium passenger base (Emirates, Virgin, many Asian carriers, etc) all had placed orders early on for the Boom jets (and some had invested in Boom), placing themselves ahead of the pack. Although deliveries were delayed into the late-2020’s, those which received them were able to sell each seat a premium (and had to reduce the cost of upper-class seats in legacy aircraft they operated) which hit airlines without such capabilities quick hard. By the mid-2030s, once Boom had delivered several hundred of these aircraft and had begun initial deliveries of a 100+ seat transport (thanks to its partnership with Embraer), the global travel industry was changing quickly. Premium travel services for Boom-flying passengers from most airlines were de rigueur, and a greater stratification in travel (between those flying slow, old cattle cars with more seats packed in, and modern jetsetters) forced airports to compete with new facilities to attract such flights. By 2038, supersonic travel had caused major changes in the entire air transport industry, causing ripple effects upon premium cargo delivery services and into the fractional business jet operators.

Business Jets Goes Faster and Higher

As mentioned in the section above, the supersonic revolution had caused major upheaval in the business jet industry. A major stratification occurred, separating those without a viable supersonic capability from those who had it. While not every aircraft buyer (or renter) needs to go supersonic, or can afford to, all of the higher-end buyers demanded it. This caused every OEM and engine manufacturer to either license such technology, acquire firms which had it, or risk being relegated to the ‘legacy’ market by 2030. While supersonic jets will only begin entering the market slowly in the mid-to-late 2020s, potential customers are chomping at the bit to place their orders. All of this had a great effect on the used aircraft market pricing, and the emergence of electric hybrid aircraft with their lower-operational costs to further erode legacy aircraft values by the late 2030s.

The development of supersonic technology will force several of the companies which lack such capabilities to merge and downsize, which enabled most of them to survive in some manner. Gulfstream had researched supersonic earlier, and once the Boom deal was consummated, it was able to greatly expand its market share into small single-aisle supersonic products (using the assembly lines from Embraer) and become a much larger player in aviation. In fact, by the mid-2030s, it was looking at merging with Embraer in order to directly compete in the single-aisle market with Boeing and Airbus. The Gulfstream -Boom-Embraer consortium became the dominant player in the upper-class passenger travel market (for those who did not own their own business jets at least) and airlines clamored for their products to satisfy these customers.

Cessna found a way to license technology from Lockheed and used this launch its own supersonic aircraft, as well as offering electric hybrid aircraft for shorter haul customer needs. This was needed due to the oil price increases in the 2020s. Other small aircraft OEMs followed the electric hybrid approach to meet market needs. NASA found a way to fund its space missions by licensing its research in supersonic, biofuels, and other efforts to the remaining aircraft manufacturers helping them survive. Taxpayers were happy. Politicians claimed credit for results which they did not own. A victory for all.

Oil Shocks Disrupt All of Aviation

The world had become complacent with oil prices becoming relatively stable in 2018, and this persisted until the mid-2020s when some of the cheaper oil deposits were becoming depleted. Deepwater drilling is much more costly, and this, combined with the slow weakening in shale oil production, drove oil prices upwards. Political turmoil in the Middle East (enough said) and in African nations also affected oil prices and supply. This was just the shock that aviation needed to move towards biofuels and move faster into more fuel-efficient aircraft and engine designs and electric (or hybrid electric) aircraft. Due to the price of oil, biofuels were competitively priced by the late 2020s, and widely available.

General Aviation Overlaps the Drone Industry

This part of the market has always been slow to adopt newer technologies, primarily due to cost issues. But the emergence of passenger-carrying drones before 2020 started to really ramp up over time as autonomous flying vehicles began appearing everywhere at small aircraft airports. Air taxi services became the Uber of the Skies (with on-demand transportation companies such as Lyft — very appropriate name — teaming up with aviation firms to merge their capabilities into passenger-carrying drones as well, giving Uber strong competition). This caused a great shift in GA, and you could now take an on-demand flight with your cohorts on a weekend trip to Vegas, golf destinations, and pretty much anywhere else (within range of the craft) without having to waste time in large airports or the interstate highways. What a bonanza. Expedia and other travel sites went crazy into offering new types of packaged travel excursions for small groups into new locations. Local tour operators could offer many more adventure tours cost-effectively by utilizing such vehicles controlled by professional drone operators thousands of miles away to get adventure-seekers into previously difficult-to-reach destinations (remote islands, mountain tops, etc). All of this became possible only after incredible pressure from the entire industry (and the political process) onto the FAA, EASA, Transport Canada, etc. to fast-track certification of such craft. Which they did. Problems happened, but nothing would dampen the mad rush into being able to step onto your personal aircraft and travel directly to a local/regional destination with MUCH less travel hassle.

Many of the autonomous, navigation, collision-avoidance, and other needed technologies came from NASA and DARPA (and DOD), all of which basked in the glory of their participation in re-invigorating the aviation and travel industries. Kudos to all! Many of the smaller GA aircraft OEMs were forced to either purchase, license, team or be bought out by the new entrants (and this included Google, Uber, Lyft, eHang, and drone companies which were able to scale up). This included some defense drone manufacturers, Northrop and General Atomics, which each created new divisions to license their capabilities to GA OEMs (rather than manufacture such new aircraft, it was easier to license technology, and take a stake in the operational drone service providers which emerged to compete with Uber, Lyft and other such service providers). Basically, a complete commotion in the industry would happen over 20 years’ time and expand the industry greatly around the world. By 2038, a few legacy aircraft were still being offered, but most new turboprops and rotorcraft were either electric, electric hybrids or had drone-type capabilities (where remote operators either took the place of a pilot, or, assisted those flying when needed).

2038: What a Time to Be Alive and Traveling

While we glossed over many details in our predictions here for the sake of brevity, the key takeaways are that once a massive shift actually takes place, the momentum of it is difficult to resist.

Supersonic is a very appealing technology area, for all of the obvious reasons, and with all of the current activity around it today, it will be here faster than many pundits believe possible. There are quite a few problems with it that still need to be resolved. Electric and electric hybrid aircraft are also a key part of the picture. All of this, along with new lower-weight materials and more efficient engines and aircraft designs, will drive aviation over the next 20 years.

But the biggest impact upon the average person will be the personal flying vehicles, or, passenger-carrying drones. These will upend the travel market, and doom some of the smaller turboprop market for economic reasons. The emergence of this new sub-sector will drive changes initially to how upper-middle-class travelers can reach more remote destinations, and once prices reach a lower equilibrium, will have a major effect on more travelers and how localized cargo is delivered (especially in hard to reach locations). New service providers to support this will emerge. The economics of this will be substantial and difficult to forecast.

The emergence of going faster (supersonic), getting there for a lower cost (electric aircraft, and new aircraft/engine designs) and personalized travel (at least on a localized or even regional basis via flying drones) will kick-start the next set of revolutions in the industry. And we have not even touched on the space tourism, asteroid mining and military space race developments, but that is another article for another day.