Issue 366: Time Machines, Business aviation’s quiet struggle

And from there passenger numbers and aircraft movements at Western Sydney Airport are really forecast to take off. An expanded terminal will allow the airport to process 15 million passengers a year from the mid to late 2030s – that’s as many as Perth Airport today.

Then sometime in the 2040s it will pass Brisbane Airport’s current 23 million passengers a year.

Continued growth should trigger the construction of a second, parallel runway in the 2050s once the initial single runway configuration reaches capacity of 37 million passengers a year. That second runway will allow Western Sydney Airport to seize the mantle of Sydney’s busiest airport – the current Sydney (Eastern?) Airport handled 43 million passengers in 2017 and is, thanks to its curfew and movements cap, effectively nearing capacity.

Then by the early 2060s Western Sydney Airport could be handling 80 million passengers a year (about what LAX handles today).

Should those growth estimates prove even remotely accurate, Western Sydney Airport will be a hugely significant piece of national infrastructure, and a driver of economic growth in the Western Sydney region.

So it’s encouraging to hear that Western Sydney Airport Co is trying to ‘future proof’ the new airport, thinking through how to incorporate everything from self-flying taxis, autonomous ground vehicles and new passenger processing technologies.

No one can predict the future, but the pace of technological change does mean we can be certain it will look very different from today.

And so what will the aircraft of 2040, 2050 and 2060 that will bring those tens of millions of passengers to Western Sydney Airport look like? Thirty or 40 years ago, airliners didn’t look too dissimilar to what they are now – cylindrical fuselages, swept wings, turbofan engines. But it seems unlikely that the airliners of 30 or 40 years hence would still be following the same basic recipe.

Intense competition is driving airliner and engine manufacturers to develop ever more efficient designs. But how much more efficiency can be squeezed out of the modern turbofan design, and out of carbon fibre composite materials?

Will we see more exotic shapes, such as flying wings? Can hypersonic flight become a reality? What role will autonomy play, both on the flightdeck and within air traffic management?

And then there is the growing need for aviation to address its contribution to climate change. More efficient designs are great, but that doesn’t offset emissions growth when more and more aircraft are taking to the skies.

So how will that shape future aircraft design, and what impact will that have on airport infrastructure? Will biofuels finally become cost-competitive? When, or will, hybrid electric aircraft become an economic reality?

These are questions I’m not brave enough to attempt to answer, but will certainly need to be considered and addressed.

Welcome Steve

With this issue we welcome a new member to the Australian Aviation editorial flightcrew, our newlyappointed deputy editor, Steve Gibbons. A self-confessed aeroplane geek and reguar contributor to the magazine, Steve is a highly experienced journalist and editor, and will be helping with production as well as continuing to write feature stories. He’s already proving a terrific force multiplier.