Not officially yet, but Airbus is collaborating with Rolls-Royce on UltraFan integration/testing. The engine has a geared architecture and is planned for 2025 availability. Airbus has had job postings for A350neo development.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...e-engined-a350

GTF engines are the future.

I dont have historical data to back that up but just looking at the schedule for the rest of this year, Air France is indeed daily. In the summer months there are 3x DTW-CDG (2 DL and 1 AF). In the fall, it is the second DL flight that gets cut.

Regarding LHR, I just did some sporadic schedule checks and LHR stays 2x daily for most of the year but I don't see Virgin on the route. That has not been true in the past. Up until last year, Virgin was putting either a 787 or 330 on the route. Not sure if that was in addition to the 2 DL flights or instead of one of them.

And I was mistaken on DTW-MEX. It is indeed 2x daily but its 1 DL and 1 AM.

Not only that, the UltraFan has variable pitch main fan blades, removing the thrust reverses.

That's crazy! Wouldn't that disrupt the airflow like crazy though and cause some sort of compressor stall or starve the combustion chamber of air?

Am i weird or just a gearhead for being really jazzed about this new engine technology? Lol...

Exciting times.

Why not both?

You're probably right.

The evolutionary step beyond the hi bypass fan engine has been conceptually understood for a long time.

They played around wth UDF testbeds but its turned out to be a much longer term solution. Its quite the accomplishment.

I think the bigger question is whether they will be able to build an engine like that with what we now see as standard reliability and maintenance intervals from a turbine engine. Some evolutionary steps were understood but were never really implemented or were on a relatively small scale because by the time they could be built the next propulsion step beyond was also feasible. See turbo compound engines and the Napier Nomad.

Turbo compounding...great idea. But problematic.

Murphy seems to indicate the more moving parts the greater probability one is gonna cause a problem.

But even the incredibly reliable HBF engines of today had birthing issues.

It is exciting to see these powerplants come online.