Consortium Advances Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Demonstrator Project

Airbus, with partners from across the European Union, the UK and the US, is pursuing a hybrid-electric non-propulsive energy architecture for next-generation commercial aircraft with LEIA - Large Scale Integration Demonstrator of Hybrid Electrical Architecture.

LEIA, a project supported by the European Union Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking, will advance high-voltage generation and distribution for electrical aircraft systems for short-to-medium range aircraft, bridging the gap between component-level innovation and aircraft-level maturity.

"Our progress in developing hybrid-electric technologies and our move into the LEIA demonstrator marks a pivotal shift in how we design the future of flight," said Karim Mokaddem, Head of aircraft of tomorrow Research and Technology at Airbus. "By moving to integrated, intelligent hybrid-electric architectures, we are actively laying the physical and digital foundation for the next generation of aircraft. This evolution demonstrates that the future of aviation is about more than just new power sources; it is also about the new ecosystems that will manage them."

LEIA builds on the SWITCH project, which focused on hybrid-electric powertrain subsystems and reached a milestone in July when Collins Aerospace completed integrated laboratory testing, with partners including Pratt & Whitney, GKN Aerospace, and MTU Aero Engines.

These subsystems are now transitioning to the Airbus Sustainable Technology and Engineering Projects (STEP) laboratory in Ottobrun, Germany, for aircraft-level integration testing, including battery interfacing and energy-management systems.

Airbus is leading integration of electrical components, including motor/generators, electronic controllers, and power distribution equipment, to be validated through a testing programme culminating in a ground demonstration by 2027.

Airbus collaborates with several partners on LEIA: AVL, Collins Aerospace, the European Aerospace Science Network (EASN), Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Liebherr Aerospace, Lynxeo, the Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR), Safran, SAFT, the University of Warwick, and Wroclaw University of Science and Technology.