[wahern]

> I think a lot of the jet engine manufacturers are seeing this same corporate rot process, the number of high profile scandals across the industry and reports of insiders on how the number crunchers are taking over the business are strangely reminiscent of what we heard out of Boeing and Intel.

And there's the opening for China. The 90s and early 2000s saw alot of innovation by engine manufacturers. Boeing and Airbus built their planes around the next generation of engines coming out. But over the past 10 or so years all the major engine manufacturers decided to stop investing in new civilian engines and maximize their dividends on existing models. That's what killed the A380--the A380 engines are 90's tech, and all the engine manufacturers declined to build a new engine for an upgraded A380, not even one that utilized the current tech, and not even if Airbus backstopped potential losses.

So now is probably the best time since the 1980s for China to play catch-up. But the biggest problem is as you pointed out--engines and airframes are developed together, and both Airbus and Boeing also decided to stop new aircraft development and instead coast and reap dividends for the next decade or two, so there's no market for China to break into. There's still development happening in the defense space, but that's not a market open to China, either. Their only potential market is primarily domestic, and it's not capable of incentivizing and demanding dogged innovation in the same way the international market could.

[MichaelZuo]

Modern high bypass jet engines are already pretty close to maximum possible thermodynamic efficiency, given realistic constraints such as weight, wing clearance, noise, and so on.

Even if all constraints were relaxed, the absolute limit might be another halving of fuel consumption. (with trillions of R&D)

And beyond that, there literally can never be jet engines significantly more efficient, until the end of the universe.

[nradov]

There is still the potential for significant efficiency improvements with open rotor ultra-high bypass propfan designs.

https://www.geaerospace.com/news/articles/shape-things-come-...

And for short flights, battery electric or hybrid power could boost efficiency even further. Although that will depend on developing batteries with better safety and power density characteristics.

[MichaelZuo]

The further halving already includes literally everything under the sun, such as open rotor ultra-high bypass propfan designs.

[mc32]

The A380 was killed for lack of demand as the airline industry changed. Boeing made the right bet.

In addition even if had been engine-centric there is no way there was enough market to dedicate R&D for a new engine for this limited market.

[wahern]

Yes and no. Had there been more demand it would still be around, of course. But one of the reasons (albeit a lesser reason) there wasn't much demand was because of the antiquated engine tech. The poor A380 fuel efficiency competitiveness had less to do with it having 4 engines than that those engines were 1990s tech, same generation as on the 777, despite the first delivery of the A380 being more than 10 years after the 777. The 787 and A350 were favored by the industry not only because of point-to-point, but because their engines had far better fuel efficiency. (Even at the same generation, ETOPS aircraft would have slightly better fuel efficiency, but maintenance and overall operational cost is significantly higher because of the power envelop and reliability margins required, keeping the quadjet A380 cost competitive.)

Both Airbus and Emirates were willing to keep the A380 alive. Emirates was making money on it, and Airbus believed the market would eventually turn as airports reached takeoff/landing capacity. But Emirates wanted upgraded engines, so for several years there were negotiations between Emirates & Airbus on the one hand, and the big 3 engine makers on the other. IIRC, circa 2018 Emirates & Airbus were very close to a binding agreement with Rolls-Royce for an upgraded engine, but then Rolls-Royce faced costly issues with its existing programs. At the same time, prospective investment in the engine industry had already started winding down, and Rolls-Royce didn't want to be spending cash on a new program while GE and Pratt & Whitney were passing through profits to shareholders. So in 2019 Rolls-Royce walked away, and shortly thereafter (weeks if not days), Airbus and Emirates agreed to terminate the A380.

It's difficult to find non-paywalled sources, but see, e.g., https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2018/10/16/is-...