Alcoa announces 20-20 initiative for aerospace metallics at the Paris Air Show Alcoa was in the international spotlight today when the company defined an ambitious initiative to reduce the cost and weight of aircraft metallics products by 20 percent over the next two decades. The company’s vision for redefining the cost and weight performance for aerospace metallics was announced first at last year’s Farnborough Air Show in England. Alcoa Aerospace President William F. Christopher said there is a good future for metallic products in the aviation industry - and Alcoa is ready to work with aircraft manufacturers in maximizing their use on derivative and future airliners. “Our 20-20 initiative is focused on three objectives,” William F. Christopher, told reporters at Alcoa’s Paris Air Show press conference this morning. “The first is to frame every decision we make in terms of helping our aerospace customers manufacture and sell aircraft meeting the needs of the world’s airlines. The second is to shift current thinking about the cost and weight of metallics, while the third is to develop new generations of innovative metallic structures that will help our customers break existing paradigms associated with the manufacture of built-up structures.” He said Alcoa Aerospace intends to be a provider of advanced metallic structural products and solutions, enhancing value by merging its technical capabilities with the needs of customers. “Alcoa no longer views itself as a traditional materials supplier, and the next two decades of our 20-20 initiative will set the period during which we move into our new role,” Christopher explained. “We are ready to work collaboratively with our customers’ designers and engineers, merging Alcoa’s knowledge with theirs to ensure the initiative’s success.” Alcoa’s definition of advanced metallic structural products includes components such as monolithic doors and integrally-stiffened panels for fuselage, wings and the tail. These structures can be complex and may combine multiple product forms - such as extrusions, castings, forgings, sheet or plate. One advanced metallics application demonstrated to journalists at the Paris Air Show was an airliner emergency escape door. Today, a typical door is made with a built-up aluminum structure and a separate aluminum skin, for a total count of 113 parts. Alcoa has evolved two potential concepts for such a door as part of its 20-20 initiative: one using an investment casting as the internal structure, covered by a separate skin; and another with a forged and machined internal structure covered by a separate skin. Using the first solution, Alcoa foresees a decrease in total parts to only 11, with a 29 percent reduction in manufacturing cost. In the second solution, the parts count is 20, and the cost reduction reaches 41 percent. Alcoa’s 20-20 initiative is the result of the company’s continuing dialog with its broad international customer base. Alcoa recently completed an industry survey of airframe manufacturers’ needs for their derivative and next-generation aircraft, conducting approximately 440 interviews with aerospace industry engineers, designers and managers. Christopher noted that Alcoa has broadened its capabilities through the acquisition of Howmet (precision castings in superalloy, titanium and aluminum alloys and of Huck Fasteners and Fairchild Fasteners - which have been combined to create Alcoa Fastening Systems.