Boeing has reached an important milestone in its trajectory of more than 90 years in Brazil: the tenth anniversary of the center dedicated to aerospace technological research and development, called Boeing Research & Technology Brazil (BR&T-B). Since 2014, this research center has been actively involved in activities that combine technology and sustainability, as well as areas such as operational efficiency and digital engineering.
Since its opening, the center has had a dedicated team of 100% Brazilian research engineers who have been instrumental in developing projects in collaboration with Brazilian universities and research funding institutions. BR&T-B also works in partnership with Boeing engineering centers around the world, such as the one opened in São José dos Campos in 2023.
The Brazilian research center is part of a group of 12 others from Boeing, which work with research and technological development, spread across the world, the most recent of which opened in April this year in Japan.
The work developed includes studies with Poli-USP – to understand crowd behavior at airports and cabin comfort for passengers – and with FAPESP, to understand the potential of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) in the Brazil. The latter, a pioneering work in the country, identified gaps and pointed out directions so that the country can stand out in this market.
The development of SAF, by the way, has been one of BR&T's biggest investment fields in recent years. In partnership with Unicamp, Boeing contributed to the creation of SAFMaps, a database that allows understanding the availability of the most promising raw materials for the production of sustainable aviation fuels in specific areas in the country. Boeing is the only company to finance the project since 2023.
Currently, one of the most important collaboration projects developed by the center is the “Route Maximizer and Vertical Profile Optimization”, focused on optimizing operational efficiency, being developed in partnership with GOL since 2019.
In addition to these projects, throughout this decade the partnership with universities resulted in significant contributions to the academic community, including around 50 scientific articles in journals, symposiums and seminars. The BR&T-B team registered 34 patent applications around the world, of which two were recently granted in Brazil.