How to Stay Ahead of Competitors With Innovation in Aviation Part Design

In aerospace, the race to dominate the skies starts with smarter aircraft parts. Innovation in parts design is taking center stage among manufacturers. Companies are rethinking shape, weight, function, and construction of critical components.

Heightened focus on parts design can dramatically lower costs. Roughly 70% to 80% of a product’s life cycle cost is determined during the design phase, making it the single most cost-leveraged stage of production. Engineers are shaving off grams, morphing wings to modular cabins, and designing next-generation aircraft built around performance, efficiency, and sustainability.

Why part design is aviation’s new innovation battleground

Aviation leaders are betting heavily on more strategic part design to manage costs and supply-chain uncertainty.

Delta and Airbus recently expanded their multi-decade partnership to fast-track parts and systems innovation. Through Airbus’ UpNext labs, they’re testing everything from advanced wing designs to aircraft assistive systems with an aim to improve fuel efficiency and structural responsiveness across new and existing fleets.

Delta is heavily involved in Airbus’s engineering processes through test participation and ongoing design feedback loops.

At the same time, Delta is also partnering with JetZero to bring a radically different aircraft frame to the market. The new structure is a blended-wing-body (BWB) design that has the potential to cut fuel use by up to 50%. Crucially, these BWB designs use today’s engines— proof that gains don’t always require major propulsion overhauls.

From legacy to lift-off: moving beyond traditional design

Most legacy aircraft designs weren’t built with today’s fuel costs or emissions goals in mind. Yesterday’s planes were optimized for mass production, but today’s airframe design is being radically reimagined.

JetZero’s BWB model ditches the narrow, tube-shaped fuselage for a wide-body frame integrated directly into the wings. That design uses existing engines and airport infrastructures while delivering more lift, less drag, and an even weight distribution.

Meanwhile, Airbus has launched the “eXtra Performance Wing” project to explore new, shape-shifting wings that can adjust mid-flight for maximum aerodynamic efficiency. The flight behavior of birds is the inspiration for these new performance wings, constructed to respond dynamically to airflow conditions.

In both example scenarios, it’s not new materials or propulsion systems driving breakthroughs. Rather, it's fresh thinking about what parts can and should do.

Additive manufacturing is changing the parts game

Additive manufacturing (AM), in theory, allows engineers to print almost anything, reduce waste, skip tooling, and speed up iterations. In practice, Boeing has already printed more than 70,000 parts for its aircraft using AM, some of which are flying today with better strength-to-weight ratios than their machined counterparts.

The technology offers benefits that go far beyond weight and cost. Additive unlocks design for function, like complex geometries such as lattice structures, hollow interiors, and internal cooling channels that were once believed impossible with traditional machining. With AM, they are now fair game. These innovations lead to better thermal performance, vibration damping, and fatigue life, especially in harsh flight environments.

Boeing’s printed environmental control ducts are a standout example. Engineers redesigned the internal structure using 3D printing, thus cutting total part count from dozens to one, slashing assembly labor, reducing weight, and improving airflow efficiency.

Widely deployed, additive manufacturing is giving today’s design teams freedom to rethink what’s possible.

Additive meets hybrid: the rise of multi-process part manufacturing

While additive manufacturing has opened the floodgates for complex geometries, it’s not always the final answer. Increasingly, manufacturers are blending additive processes with subtractive techniques like CNC machining to achieve tight tolerances, smoother finishes, or structural reinforcements.

This hybrid approach, sometimes called “additive-subtractive manufacturing,” is showing up in parts that need internal lattice structures for weight savings, but also require machined surfaces for bolt connections or mating to legacy components. The model allows for flexibility in design and precision in fit.

Boeing and other OEMs are already investing in hybrid machine tools that switch between laser deposition and milling in the same setup, seeing lower scrap rates and the ability to iterate faster on previously unbuildable parts.

Aerospace design teams embracing hybrid methods can use manufacturing as a springboard for even bolder ideas.

The role of simulation in next-gen part design

Designing smarter parts starts in the modeling software. Aerospace leaders are leaning heavily on simulation tools to virtually stress-test parts before they go into production. These digital evaluations, whether for thermal stress, fluid dynamics, or fatigue over time, are giving engineers more power to fail early, iterate fast, and skip expensive physical prototyping rounds.

Companies like Boeing and Airbus are already using tools like Siemens NX, Ansys, and Dassault Systèmes to validate new parts, predict material fatigue, and model entire system performance. For complex AM parts, this simulation is critical. Boeing’s additive team uses modeling to test topology-optimized (highly efficient, weight-reduced geometries) parts that would be impossible to evaluate using legacy methods.

These tools are also essential for scaling. As parts become more complex, simulation reduces the need for multiple costly builds and physical tests, making it faster and cheaper to innovate without compromising safety or certification standards.

Lean, agile, and flight-tested

Innovative part design only matters if it scales. That’s where modern design teams are combining agile development, simulation-based validation, and real-world feedback loops to safely speed up cycles.

Delta’s collaboration with Airbus includes live flight testing of “fello’fly”—a technique that mimics the V-formation of migrating geese. The leading aircraft generates an updraft that a trailing aircraft can ride to reduce drag and save fuel. It's an aerodynamic optimization made possible by careful systems design and extensive simulation before test flights ever begin.

Meanwhile, companies like JetZero are applying lean principles to entire aircraft design workflows. By focusing on fewer, multifunctional parts and building digital twins of their aircraft early, they’re able to iterate faster and collaborate more deeply with partners like Delta and the U.S. Air Force.

This approach, design fast, test often, and fail forward, is increasingly becoming standard in advanced aerospace programs.

Cross-sector inspiration: borrowing from automotive and defense

Aerospace may be pushing boundaries in flight, but some of its smartest part design strategies are coming from outside the industry. Insights of the automotive and defense sectors, longtime pioneers of lightweighting, modularity, and design-for-manufacturing practices, are now bleeding into aviation.

For example, the automotive industry’s use of generative design software has paved the way for aircraft parts that prioritize material efficiency. GM’s 3D-printed seatbelt bracket—a single part that replaced eight components—is conceptually similar to how Boeing reduced dozens of duct pieces into a single AM part.

Meanwhile, the defense sector’s long history of modular weapons and drone systems has inspired rethinkings of aircraft interiors and maintenance protocols. Airbus’ exploration of modular cargo and passenger zones borrows directly from defense design, where rapid mission reconfiguration is required.

These crossover strategies show that innovation in part design doesn’t need to be invented from scratch. Sometimes, the edge comes from adapting what's already been proven in high-stakes environments.

How to future-proof your own part design process

You don’t need to be Airbus or Delta to modernize your approach. You just need to take an integrative approach to design. The most forward-looking aerospace teams are treating design, testing, manufacturing, and sustainability as one conversation from the very beginning.

That means:

The human factor: How operators and maintainers shape design

The smartest part designs in aviation are aerodynamic, cost-efficient, and human-aware. Increasingly, manufacturers are prioritizing the needs of maintenance crews, pilots, and operators when designing components—because even the most advanced part fails if it’s too difficult to use or repair under real-world conditions.

Engineers at Delta’s TechOps division have worked closely with design partners to reduce the number of fasteners and simplify access points on critical systems. A seemingly minor change, like reorienting a latch or adding visual indicators, can save thousands of labor hours per year across a fleet.

Pilots, too, influence design. Airbus’s introduction of side-stick controllers and heads-up displays stemmed from cockpit feedback aimed at reducing cognitive load and improving reaction time in high-stress scenarios.

And as cabins become more modular and tech-enabled, airline employees are increasingly consulted on user experience. Delta’s involvement in JetZero’s interior planning wasn’t just about aesthetics. Employee input helped ensure service crews could efficiently access storage, support passengers with mobility limitations, and safely move about on planes.

Companies who engage their end users move beyond theoretical performance to design for real conditions. This human feedback loop, commonly overlooked, is often the winning competitive edge.

Designing for alternative propulsion

The shift toward hydrogen, electric, and sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) is changing what designers must plan for from day one.

Hydrogen propulsion, for example, demands cryogenic storage and high-pressure containment. That alters everything from the center of gravity to where structural reinforcements must go. Airbus' ZEROe program, which includes a hydrogen-fueled commercial aircraft, has spurred early-stage part design innovations—from thermal shielding to materials that won’t fracture under intense cooling cycles.

Electric aircraft bring different tradeoffs. Batteries are heavy and prone to overheating, which means lighter parts elsewhere, along with smarter airflow design, are essential. Thermal management and redundancy requirements also push design teams to rethink traditional placement of motors, ducts, and even cabin equipment.

Overall, designing for greener propulsion means reengineering what surrounds it, and that starts at the part level.

The takeaway for competitive manufacturers

If you’re still treating part design as a fixed stage in a linear process, you have a tremendous opportunity to rethink your entire product life cycle, cutting costs, accelerating development, and building more resilient, future-ready aircraft from the ground up.

Boeing is designing parts that couldn’t exist five years ago. Airbus is using flying geese as a model for route efficiency. And JetZero is rethinking what an airplane is. These aren’t side projects; they’re the main act made possible by a cross-functional, simulation-first culture that prioritizes safety and sustainability.

The future of flight is built in the details. Old methods falter. New designs, honed by smart tools and hard-won lessons, carve out the competitive edge. This is how aircraft will stand the test: lean, efficient, and ready.

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Resources:

CIRP Annals

Delta News

Delta News

Boeing IQ

Airbus Innovation Hub

Airbus ZEROe