Swelling aircraft orderbooks are prompting questions about whether deliveries could inflate airline capacity too much in coming years. But Boeing maintains that a supply overload is unlikely to occur, and it has identified a set of metrics it says proves that market conditions justify the size of the current backlog.

Five years after General Electric launched its initiative to penetrate the small turboprop market with the acquisition of Czech engine maker Walter and the development of the H80, the company is midway through its first full year of production and poised to bolster its line-up with studies of additional variants.

Carbon in its many forms is transforming manufacturing, from electronics to structures. Aerospace uses carbon in fiber form, but new nano-structured materials are emerging that promise improved properties and expanded applications.

Investigators looking into the July 12 Boeing 787 fire are now focusing on what caused an emergency locator transmitter (ELT) device to combust, and devising modifications to prevent any recurrence.

Eight years ago, Southeast Asian-based airlines had just 29 turboprop airliners in the 70-seat class. Since then the fleet has more than tripled to 106, with ongoing orders making the region one of the most important for the turboprop sector. More remarkably, this growth has happened, and is continuing, amid powerful expansion by budget airlines, the classic enemy of the turboprop operator.

Walking through the Paris air show last month, I was struck by the large number of companies exhibiting under one regional or cluster umbrella. There were, to mention a few, Aerospace Valley, Rockford Area Aerospace Network, Monterrey Aerocluster Mexico, Isle of Man Aerospace Cluster, Aero Montreal, Skywin Wallonie and Northwest Aerospace Alliance. Such groupings have a basic economic rationale: They allow small suppliers to be present at a show without bearing the full costs of renting their own stands in an exhibit hall.

Despite the challenges faced in scaling up feedstock and fuel production to commercial volumes—at competitive prices—aviation may yet achieve the target of meeting 1% of jet-fuel needs from sustainable biofuels by 2015, as airlines step up with plans for large-scale purchases.

The suite of tools covers program management, product modeling and design engineering