Next Perspectives – Aerospace – Top 10 trends 2025

One of the main challenges facing the sector is to halve the time-to-market for future programs—from 10 years to 5 years—while reinventing the product itself. This involves rethinking the validation of the aircraft's overall architecture, from the general and detailed design of the systems to their verification and validation, right through to certification by the aviation authorities. Digital transformation plays a key role in these developments. 

In the aerospace industry, increasing production rates relies more than ever on efficient, effective production that complies with quality standards. To achieve this, the main impact of generative AI lies in the automation of low-value-added tasks, freeing workers to perform more strategic activities. In addition, process standardization ensures consistency and accuracy while reducing errors and costs. 

Planning processes can be greatly improved in most manufacturing industries, and the aerospace sector is no exception. As constraints mount in both the civil and defense sectors, this function has never been more important in dealing with price pressures, raw material shortages, customer demands, and limited supplier capacity, while ensuring deliveries are made at the required pace. 

Providing operational availability throughout the life cycle of a system, designed as a profitable “product,” represents a true paradigm shift. The success of such models lies in the optimization of processes, interactions, and digital continuity, as well as the implementation of intelligent modularisation and controlled standardisation. 

Ecological transition, digitalisation, cybersecurity, automation: these are all changes that are profoundly redefining professions. This transformation is taking place in an already tense context, between waves of retirements and industrial ramp-up. Two dynamics coexist: consolidating current know-how while developing new skill profiles. 

Faced with the climate emergency, the aerospace industry is stepping up its transformation to reduce its carbon footprint. The sector's transformation should lead to more fuel-efficient, higher-performing aviation with more consolidated governance. Digital technology is a discreet but essential catalyst for this transition. 

As the number of end-of-life aircraft increases, production rates intensify, and tensions over material supply grow, circularity requirements within the industry, as well as the regulatory constraints that accompany them, are becoming increasingly urgent. It is in this context that the Digital Passport Product (DPP) is being launched. 

Flight assistance, in-flight diagnostics, predictive maintenance, onboard services: advances in artificial intelligence and the rise of connectivity are paving the way for significant improvements in flight safety and efficiency, while optimising the passenger experience. 

The immense challenges facing the aerospace industry (industrial ramp-up, sovereignty, sustainability, etc.) and the costs associated with these transformations require multi-partner approaches that enable the pooling of skills and resources. These approaches are increasingly based on digital platforms, which make it possible to connect the entire ecosystem around common issues. The industry's next goal? To connect more than 10,000 players through an accessible, open-source, secure, and sovereign solution. 

Globalisation has intensified international data exchanges, particularly in the aerospace industry. Regulatory constraints on data protection and the control of exports of military equipment and dual-use items (DUI) can be seen not as obstacles, but as levers for strengthening data governance.