Are higher fuel prices a blessing for aircraft manufacturers and, maybe, for airlines? They are if they prompt technology improvements that bring long-term savings.

Pratt & Whitney’s latest geared turbofan engine – the PW1200G for the Japanese MRJ project – is now starting test flights on the company’s recently-inaugurated Boeing 747SP flying testbed.

Composites improve aircraft performance but production must quicken.

Alcoa's 50,000-ton press may not match the heft of a gargantuan 80,000-ton unit being built in China, but the metals manufacturer says its 12-story machine is the most capable in the world. A $100 million redesign and rebuild of the Cold War-era press at the company's Cleveland plant added a new hydraulic system that allows tighter tolerances during the forging of aluminum, titanium, inconel and steel parts, significantly reducing the amount of metal needed while cutting machining costs.

Automated layup is cutting the time required to produce composite structures. But production volumes forecast for the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 are pressuring industry to accelerate the rate at which it can deposit carbon fiber on tools. Flexible, multi-head machines provide one answer. The U.K.'s National Composites Center is the first to operate an automated fiber-placement machine with two robotic heads working cooperatively. Built by France's Coriolis Composites, it is being used by GKN Aerospace on the U.K.'s Next-Generation Composite Wing project.

It has been a long time coming, but US Airways has made its first move to take over American Airlines, and the reception, as expected, has been less than welcoming.

Automated non-destructive inspection of composite parts for delamination and other defects is a critical step that is becoming more challenging as structures become larger and more complex. Ultrasound inspection conventionally requires parts to be immersed in a water tank or sprayed with water jets to guide the pulses. Now non-contract laser ultrasound is allowing remote, robotic inspection of complete airframe sections. Airbus, with EADS Innovation Works and France's Ecole des Mines, is evaluating a laser ultrasound system using a composite forward-fuselage demonstrator.

Additive manufacturing—producing parts layer by layer direct from digital models—is moving into aerospace. Three-dimensional printing is widely used for rapid prototyping with polymer materials, but technologies for additive manufacturing with aerospace metals are maturing.