The idea of supersonic transport for civilians is back on the card, 16 years after Concorde's last flight
, the latest version of that firm’s bestselling narrow-bodied airliner, fell from the sky in Ethiopia. All 157 souls on board were lost. This followed the crash off the coast of Java, less than five months earlier, of another 737. The death toll then was 189. The immediate cause in both cases seems to have been a faulty sensor feeding false data to an avionic flight-management system that had, in turn, had new software which pilots had not been briefed about.
These two tragedies illuminate the tension between conservatism and innovation that lies at the heart of civil-aviation technology. As a character in “The Leopard”, a novel about the revolutionary events of Italy’s unification in the 19th century, declares: “If we want things to remain as they are, everything needs to change.” Attempts by the industry to follow that advice seem to have been what ultimately caused these crashes.The 737 goes back many years.
Those better avionics also point inexorably in one direction: to a day when most aircraft will no longer require a pilot. Airlines and their passengers and regulators may take a while to come to terms with this, so it is likely that pilots will sit in cockpits long after they are needed for anything other than the reassurance of the paying public. But armed forces are embracing a pilotless future. Surveillance and missile-carrying drones have been around for a couple of decades.
New technology is also extending the concept of civil aviation. The idea of supersonic transport for civilians is back on the cards, 16 years after Concorde’s last flight. Three firms in America, in particular, have plausible designs fors, appropriate commercial partnerships, and, they hope, sufficient money to get prototypes flying over the next few years.
Conventional civil aviation is also growing fast. The number of jet airliners flying may double by 2040 as people, particularly those in Asia who do not fly now, get richer. That will bring environmental problems, for aviation is the least tractable of industries to decarbonisation in order to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Aviation fuel packs more energy per kilogram than batteries do. And, so far, attempts to make such fuel synthetically, rather than from petroleum, have foundered on cost.
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