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.