EXAELIA - EXperimental Aircraft for European Leadership In Aviation

Research Project, 2025 – 2028

The objective of EXAELIA is to investigate and to answer the needs for novel flying testbeds for de-risking the development of disruptive future long-range aircraft, accelerating the reduction of all aviation emissions and its climate and environmental impacts in 2050.
EXAELIA investigates, through advanced multi-disciplinary digital methods, the potential emissions reductions of long-range air traffic offered by promising blended wing body aircraft configurations and by hydrogen-powered tube-and-wing configurations, including their constituting radical new technologies. Critical uncertainties are identified, in particular those requiring flight validation for de-risking the future aircraft development. For those flight test requirements which go beyond the capabilities of existing assets, novel flying testbeds are developed towards their preliminary design and demonstrated to answer the flight validation needs, efficiently combining these needs in potentially costly large-scale modular flying testbeds.
Roadmaps are prepared for the further development of the EXAELIA flying testbeds and their use in the development of the future long-range aircraft, entering into service before 2050 with a maximum contribution to reducing aviation impact and emissions (~49% of air transport system emissions in 2019 came from long range aircraft). Operational and business plans for these indispensable test bed assets are provided as well.
The EXAELIA consortium consists of the major European research centres and academia in future aircraft conceptual design and analysis, flight testing, and flying testbed development, and 4 SMEs, all with a strong record in collaboration. An Advisory Board, including European aircraft and engine manufacturers and further industries will provide guidance to achieving the objective and to obtaining their support to the roadmaps. The total grant request of this 42-month action is 16 233 889 Euros.