If necessity is the mother of invention, European research funding may well be its rich and benevolent grandfather. The public has a right to police its European masters' choices in directing the ambitious Clean Sky research strategy that will underpin future air travel. It's not just that the €1.6 billion ($2 billion) initiative will receive half of its resources from the public - more importantly, achieving emission reduction goals by 2020 will rely critically on the momentum of the industrial machine, with all its global intricacies. Lessors are also urging airframers to rethink production rates amid warnings that availability of capital to finance aircraft could be hit. Those heading the Clean Sky think-tank admit they have built in an assumption that the much-heralded air traffic optimisation will have arrived by 2020, complementing any emerging revolutionary technology.
Already a European ATM chief is signalling that the sharp downturn in airline traffic may threaten efficiency. The effect of lengthy economic recession could diminish the appetite of the principal stakeholders to make radical air travel concepts a reality. Clean Sky's remit is not to impose - it will be the airframer that decides whether to take these eventual ideas to market.
While so many assumptions lie behind Clean Sky, it may be salutary for those charting its course to have a realistic understanding of the industry's ability literally to produce the goods in these troubled times.
Source: Flight International
