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The aircraft industry in the coming years will produce airliners of different categories for a constantly growing market. Despite this apparently advantageous position it seems increasingly difficult to design new products and new technologies which promise the same rate of economic improvements the customers enjoyed in the past. By realizing this, the analysis of the future market driven aircraft requirements becomes increasingly important. Product strategies considering a total system approach become a more and more important factor in the aircraft design process. Competition in the global transport aircraft market forces aircraft manufacturers progressively more to take the right decisions today for investments in cost effective technologies for the products of tomorrow to stay successful, efficient and respond exactly to the variety of future customer and transportation system requirements.

A general outline of the motivation of the research project „Technology Navigator“ and the contents of work is given, together with details of the methodology under development. The impact of the introduction of new technology is analyzed from the view of an aircraft manufacturer, in order to derive a methodology for the support of technology scheduling. Important features of this methodology are the consideration of the whole family of aircraft addressed, the planning of technology readiness and corresponding investment and it’s impact on the cash flow curve. Where forecasts or other uncertainties are involved a statistical approach is chosen.