Airframe - Present and Future

Present and Future

Four major eras in commercial airframe production stand out: all-aluminum structures beginning in the 1920s and directly inspired by Hugo Junkers all-metal designs from as far back as 1915, high-strength alloys and high-speed airfoils beginning in the 1940s, long-range designs and improved efficiencies beginning in the 1960s, and composite material construction beginning in the 1980s, partly pioneered by Burt Rutan's designs. In the latest era, Boeing has claimed a lead, designing its new 787 series flagship airframes (currently scheduled for entry into service in the third quarter of 2011) with a one-piece carbon-fiber fuselage, said to replace "1,200 sheets of aluminum and 40,000 rivets." The Airbus A380 is also built with a large proportion of composite material.

Airframe production has become an exacting process. Manufacturers operate under strict quality control and government regulations. Departures from established standards become objects of major concern. The crash on takeoff of an Airbus A300 in 2001, after its tail assembly broke away from the fuselage, called attention to operation, maintenance and design issues involving composite materials that are used in many recent airframes. The A300 had experienced other structural problems but none of this magnitude. The incident bears comparison with the 1959 Lockheed L-188 crash in showing difficulties that the airframe industry and its airline customers can experience when adopting new technology.