The secret Airbus plan was unveiled on Tuesday at the Singapore Air Show. It’s still just a model, but this flying wing foreshadows what will be the airliner of the future. The device inherited the code name Maveric and it will replace, perhaps around 2030, the A320neo, Airbus’ bestseller, if this “disruptive” concept is validated.
According to Airbus, Maveric should reduce aircraft consumption by 20%, as this hybrid will be carried by engines powered by kerosene mixed with biofuels. On the passenger side, the aircraft promises “an extremely spacious cabin layout” and therefore “a very different experience on board”.
Maveric is a concept aircraft designed by Airbus. It could become the airliner of the 2030s.
Maveric has taken off and landed in the greatest secrecy, since last summer, in the Toulouse region. Not quite in the form of an airliner that could accommodate between 150 and 200 passengers for medium and long range flights. At this stage of its development, the flying wing is a reduced model of 2 meters long and 3.2 meters wide, called “demonstrator”. This concept plane must prove the validity and seriousness of a project that looks like science fiction.
A priori negative
The demonstrator allows Airbus to mature the technology necessary to pilot such a different aircraft. “At the outset, many rejected this project as a mere hobby,” explains Adrien Bérard, co-manager of the Maveric project. We had to prove to them that we could provide a very solid basis for future aircraft configuration. ”
One of the technological challenges was to assess the low-speed dynamics of the flying wing as its risk of stalling. Because the flight behavior of this type of aircraft is less known than that of planes that we have known for fifty years, with their cigar shape and engines hung under the wings.
Maveric has already made an impression. His images have gone around the world express. An additional success for the aircraft manufacturer who flies from record to record. Airbus has just announced that it had registered 274 orders for existing aircraft in the month of January alone, something unheard of in the history of the group. Airbus also became the world’s largest manufacturer at the end of 2019, dethroning Boeing, after delivering 863 aircraft in the previous year, the highest total in its history.
While Airbus hovers in the sky, Boeing is unable to emerge from the turbulence. Heavily weakened by the crisis of its bestseller, the 737 MAX, which is grounded after the crashes of two airliners, the American aircraft manufacturer did not register any orders, zero planes sold, during the month of January 2020 , unheard of since 1962.
The figures for this crisis are bad news. The 737 MAX’s global fleet of 387 aircraft already delivered to airlines has not taken off since March 2019. In late January 2020, Boeing also had to resolve to “temporarily” halt production of this controversial aircraft. The measure is expected to stop the build-up of stocks of 737 MAX aircraft, which are finished at the factory but cannot be delivered to airlines. Out of a total of 800 aircraft ordered, 413 remain parked at Boeing. With the specter of never seeing these devices fly.
The bill for the 737 MAX crisis has been estimated at $ 18 billion. All figures turn red, and Boeing lost money in 2019 for the first time in twenty-two years. And the American has no futuristic prototype to reveal to give employees a little hope. The first flight of the new 777X, which is to become “the world’s largest twin-engine”, went unnoticed.
And for good reason: with its wings too large which fold to maneuver in airports, this technological albatross will not replace the 737, which are the business of Boeing. In short, as the rating agency Moody’s has summed up, rebuilding the bond of trust between the manufacturer and its customers will be “more costly and longer than expected”. The longer the landing procedure, the greater the “risk to Boeing’s already damaged reputation”.
Created: 12.02.2020, 20h59
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