Keeping eco-design and circular economy principles integrated in technology development.
EcoFlight gives Airbus R&T practitioners a structured path to preserve circular economy principles through every TRL decision gate.
How to use this playbook
EcoFlight moves you from understanding the problem to acting on it — and defending your decisions.
Understand
the landscape
Learn the structural conditions that filter out eco-design and circular intent across TRL stages, and why awareness of the barrier structure is the first step to addressing it.
Identify
and act
Diagnose which barriers are active at your current development stage and find the right methods and tools to address them before the design window closes.
Defend
and translate
Reframe circular criteria in the commercial language that survives gate reviews and program handovers. Learn from conditions that have protected circular intent in practice.
What are you working on?
Describe your project situation, your current development stage, or the barrier you're facing — and I'll point you to the most relevant part of EcoFlight.
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01 — Foundations
Three Core
Concepts
In aerospace technology development, design freedom is highest at the earliest stages — precisely when the data needed to defend sustainable intentions does not yet exist. By the time lifecycle impacts can be quantified, the fundamental design is frozen and circular ambitions have been quietly eliminated at each decision gate. This playbook gives R&D practitioners the criteria, framing language, and methods to prevent that outcome. Three concepts provide the foundation: eco-design as the practice of embedding environmental criteria before decisions become costly to reverse, circular economy as the strategic goal of keeping materials at their highest value, and Technology Readiness Levels as the structure that determines what is still designable and what evidence is realistic at any given stage.
The integration of environmental criteria into the earliest stages of product design, before decisions become costly to reverse. Most of a product's environmental impact is locked in during its initial design stage, making early-stage integration the highest-leverage point in the entire development process.
MethodA resource management model oriented toward keeping materials in use at their highest possible value. In aviation cabin development, this shifts the goal from replacing components to recovering their material value. Strategies are ordered by value retention, from reuse and remanufacturing at the top, to recycling as a final intervention.
Strategic GoalA nine-level scale used to assess the maturity of a technology, from initial concept to full operational deployment. This tool organizes those nine levels into three clusters that reflect how design freedom and data availability shift across development. Early stages (TRL 1–3): design freedom is highest, but available data is most limited; the critical window for embedding circular criteria. Mid stages (TRL 4–6): key design decisions are progressively locked in as testing moves from laboratory to relevant environments. Late stages (TRL 7–9): the design is effectively frozen and the focus shifts to certification, industrialization, and deployment. The transition from TRL 6 to TRL 7 marks the point at which unresolved sustainability criteria are effectively eliminated.
Framework02 — Modules
Three Entry
Points
Each module addresses a different dimension of the same challenge: keeping circular intent alive as a project moves from concept to certification.
Guide
Criteria, framing, and data guidance organized by TRL cluster. Know what is still designable, what evidence is available, and how to defend circular choices at gate review.
Open modulePractices
Organizational conditions that have protected circular intent in practice. For each example: what condition was in place, why it worked, and how a practitioner can approximate it.
Open module& Tools
A use-this-when overview of methods and tools mapped to TRL stage and barrier type. From value chain mapping to pLCA, find the right instrument for the right moment.
Open module