Airbus plots folding wings in latest challenge to rival Boeing
Airbus’s UK wing plant is a hive of activity, its production lines humming around the clock to satisfy record demand from the world’s airlines.
Thousands of workers stream to and from the football stadium-sized buildings at the sprawling site across the Welsh border from Chester. Ninety per cent of the company’s wings are built here before being shipped to sites in France, Germany, China and the US to be used in assembly.
Away from the busy commotion of the factory floor, there’s a corner of the Broughton complex where even Airbus staff are not allowed to tread without permission.
The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), an outpost of the University of Sheffield, sits at the heart of Airbus’s efforts to develop a next-generation plane capable of consolidating the company’s lead over Boeing in the market for single-aisle jets.
Key to this is Airbus’s Wing of Tomorrow programme, which is building three prototype wings to establish just how far the engineering envelope can be pushed.
To describe the efforts as futuristic would be a rank understatement.
Current plans envisage composite wings far longer and thinner than those on Airbus’s existing planes and feature a hinge at each end so that the tips can be folded vertically, allowing the aircraft to fit into existing airport gates without clashing.
The new wings are being developed for Airbus’s narrow-body planes – the single-aisle, workhorse aircraft that make up the majority of the aviation market.
Airbus is not the first to dream up folding wings: Boeing will introduce them on its new 777X jet, due for delivery in 2026. The plane will feature a long wing that, without the hinge, would otherwise limit it to using gates reserved for jumbo jets.
However, the number of planes involved in Boeing’s widebody 777X project is tiny compared with the vast market for a new single-aisle plane. Airbus’s existing narrow-body A320 family alone has accrued more than 18,000 orders since its launch.
Folding wings may sound eccentric but a parallel programme at the AMRC will test even more radical ideas.
The eXtra Performance Wing, known as X-wing within the company, has a 52-metre span – 16 metres more than an A320 – and is equipped with so-called adaptive control technologies that will allow the wing to reshape itself to suit changing flight conditions, much as a bird’s wing does.
Airbus is examining such exotic solutions in a pursuit of the holy grail of wing dynamics: increasing lift while diminishing weight, and hence reducing fuel burn. It’s a challenge that goes to the heart of efforts to curb aviation’s carbon footprint.
“These are longer, leaner wings that will improve aerodynamic efficiency and make a very significant contribution to fuel-burn reduction,” says Sue Partridge, who leads Wing of Tomorrow and is also Airbus’s UK country manager for commercial aircraft.
There is crossover with efforts to bring the world’s first hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft to market by 2035, an Airbus project known as ZEROe.
ZEROe is exploring three possible designs, two of which appear to be compatible with the long, thin composite wings produced by Wing of Tomorrow (the other is a Concorde-style blended wing).
“We’re always trying to explore more than one option so that we can make a trade-off,” says Partridge. “One of the things about working on a technology programme is that you learn what doesn’t work as well as what does.”
The first of the three wing designs under consideration for ZEROe is now at Airbus’s Airtec facility in Bristol, where it has been attached to a “strong wall” for 12 months of stress tests. These will culminate in a dramatic trial late next year, which will see it subjected to ever increasing forces until it snaps.
Back at the AMRC, the two other wings take centre stage. One sits behind ceiling-height plastic curtains, while the other is guarded by sensors that shut down robots and automated systems should someone stray too close.
One, known as the full-equipped wing, is having 100 different technologies from 40 suppliers installed, ranging from a wide array of electronics to fuel systems. Moving control services, including flaps and slats, will be added in the coming months.
Work has also now begun on what Airbus calls the Run@Rate wing, perhaps the most important of the three since it is meant to establish just how quickly such an advanced wing could be manufactured in the real world.
Designing a new plane, winning orders and taking payment is, after all, only half the battle. Assembly lines and supply chains must be able to function under the significant stresses of accelerating build rates.
This can be a considerable challenge, as Boeing has discovered to its detriment. Production glitches led a door panel to blow out of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max, leading output of its best-selling plane to slow to a trickle and crippling its finances in the process.
Partridge says: “We are going to really test whether these technologies are capable of going at a speed that will give us the rate capability needed on the next generation of aircraft.”
That will involve rethinking how the wings are made.
The Wing of Tomorrow programme is looking at how to use more robots and automation in the production of its new wings. Partridge says the aim is to eliminate repetitive or uncomfortable labour and focus the workforce on activities that are best performed by humans.
“The A320 wing was designed in the 1980s,” says Partridge. “It’s fabricated together with tens of thousands of fasteners and every time we build one, people climb inside to install the systems.
“We’re looking to understand the balance of automation and manual work.”
Unlike the three demonstrator wings, the X-wing project involves in-flight testing.
A one-third scale version of the 52-metre wing was attached to a Cessna Citation business jet that made its first flight in Cazaux, France, in November. The wings will be swapped for the UK-built experimental morphing version next year.
Wing of Tomorrow, which was launched in 2017, is notionally scheduled to wrap up next year but Partridge says that Airbus, the University of Sheffield and the government-backed Aerospace Technology Institute, which funds the AMRC, are working on new plans.
This will include extending research into new areas, such as the integration of different engine options onto the wing.
“Whatever fuel you’re talking about, you need a highly efficient wing that burns as little as possible and makes a big contribution towards efficiency,” Partridge says. “We’re already shaping the next chapter. It will continue.”
