With a red-hot market for business aircraft, Gulfstream plans two-front assault and bombardment on French and Canadian rivals.
With this evaluation for its turboprop concept, Embraer is scratching at an entirely new strategic consideration for a multi-decade aircraft program. While large aircraft design has relied on the same fundamental type of fuel, coupled with successive generations of ever-improving engines, Embraer views its new 90-seater airframe as propulsion agnostic and a halfway step toward hydrogen. Positioning the engines on the rear of the aircraft might not produce the single most optimized design in 2027, but, in Embraer’s view, that deliberate non-optimization allows room for future evolution and growth.
Fundamentally, even with this new shape, Embraer’s tentatively designated TPNG 70 and TPNG 90 (Turboprop Next Generation) haven’t changed in their overall mission. The aircraft is still a 70 to 90-seat turboprop with a range “a little bit more than 800 nautical miles” but optimized for flights between 250 and 300 nautical miles and flown at speeds “faster than an ATR, but not as fast as the Dash 8-400,” said Souza, putting its cruising speed between 300 and 360 knots. Embraer’s goal is a 15% to 20% improvement in cash operating costs for its bigger TPNG 90 compared to the ATR 72-600.
Seeing an opening with uncertain Boeing product strategy, Airbus advances toward an A350 freighter. Possible buyers urge consideration of an engine from GE.
United Airlines wants to fly supersonic with Boom's Overture. "We are pushing the boundaries of what we can do here in commercial aviation.”
There are a growing number of recent comments from NASA officials and government notices that point to NASA plans for a piloted experimental X-plane to validate Boeing’s transonic truss-braced wing (TTBW) design as the possible template for a future smaller single-aisle. Boeing hasn’t decided on a path for its own development future, but the Biden budget priorities begin to put the U.S. government’s finger on the scale as a national stakeholder in the plane maker’s success or failure.
Log-in here if you’re already a subscriber Release DateMay 21, 2021Out of money, Aerion’s supersonic pursuit is at its endPurchase...
Airbus and Boeing, back in their corners, fight in the digital factory. Airbus in Hamburg is gearing up for production of the A321XLR.
Log-in here if you’re already a subscriber Release DateJanuary 27, 2021After Max, 787, tanker and spacecraft struggles, trouble comes to...
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In an extended interview, Arjan Meijer, Embraer's new Commercial Aviation CEO sat down with The Air Current to discuss what it wants in a partner and its path to a new turboprop.
Log-in here if you’re already a subscriber Release DateNovember 12, 2020Electric flying advances to the mainstream as Tecnam joins the...
