Aircraft engine makers flying into a brighter future

VISITORS to the Farnborough air show are used to loud noise, but this was different. A high-pitched buzz throbbed across the Hampshire airfield, prompting spectators to put down their Pimms and crane their necks at the aircraft soaring above them. It looked like an ordinary commercial airliner ? but there was something odd about its engines. One was conventional, while the other had two rows of curved propellers protruding hedgehog-like from the rear. This was the source of the unnerving howl. The unducted fan, as the banshee powerplant was called, flew at Farnborough 21 years ago. It was a prototype from General Electric, the US aero-engines group, which claimed it would…

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