There's no major announcement here (compared to what Airbus has been saying for the last few years). Airbus continues to believe that propfans/open rotor designs are worth testing for their next generation design.<p>As noted in the article, such a design would likely require rear-fuselage mounted engines, or high wings (either shoulder mounted or gull shaped)<p>What seems interesting to me is that Boeing's "next gen" bet seems to revolve around truss braced wings, which seem to also require shoulder mounted wings. I wonder how well these two features would interact with each other.
This "new tech" is at LEAST 45 years old. I worked on the 7J7 technology. Called the UDF - Un-Ducted Fan concept.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_7J7" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_7J7</a>
As a passenger the A320 and its variations are the worst plane to be on, and I’ve been all over the world.<p>They’re always a low cost airline favorite and you feel like a sardine in it; the boarding takes forever since they can hold up to 230(!!!) people in the newer variations. The bathrooms suck.<p>I had a Qatar Airways business flight and its the only time the plane was bearable, but having 100+ people board through the business class area still sucked.<p>I wish more airports supported wide bodies or stuck to smaller airplanes like the Embraer e190.