The four leading engine manufacturers are taking different approaches, but all are working to develop next-generation jet engines that burn less fuel.

The race is on to develop the aircraft engine of the future. Driven by tightening emissions standards, an increased focus on the environmental impact of aviation and changing opinions about air travel, there is pressure on the aviation industry to decarbonize its operations. And with engines being the most important, and most expensive, aircraft part, engine developments are going to shape the industry’s green transition.

To get a sense of what the aircraft engine of the future might look like, we’ve taken a look at what the four biggest manufacturers have up their sleeves for both turbofan and turboprop engines.

The new aircraft engines from CFM International

CFM International, a joint venture between GE Aviation and Safran, is behind the best-selling aircraft engine of all time, the CFM56, and what has been described as “the dominant narrow-body engine of the future”, the LEAP.

While both of those engine families represent fuel efficiency and carbon emissions improvements over what came before them, their potential successor is being hyped as “the future of flight”.

In June 2021, CFM announced its new RISE (Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines) programme that the company says will produce the next-generation CFM engine by the mid-2030s. The programme aims to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions by more than 20 percent while also being 100 percent compatible with both Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and hydrogen.

In a video announcing the programme, Safran CEO Olivier Andriès promised that the venture would prove to be “a real game-changer [that will] write a new chapter in aviation technology.”

Central to the RISE program is a first of its kind open-fan architecture that Delphine Dijoud, the CFM RISE Program’s Executive Manager for Systems Engineering, said is “the most ambitious” part of the plan and “the one that will yield the greatest benefit.”

“This will help optimize engine operation across each segment of flight, providing further improvements in efficiency and emissions reductions,” Dijoud said.

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Are these the aircraft engines of the future?