Aviation’s Sustainable Future: Navigating the Sociotechnical Matters of Concern

This study examines the sociotechnical transition to sustainable aviation by identifying four dominant matters of concern (MCs): innovating, operationalizing, prognosticating, and synchronizing. Through discursive text analysis of a curated corpus of 781 documents, the research reveals how these MCs and their associated points of contention co-occur, forming an interdependent system that reflects the contours of stakeholder debates and reveals potential underlying constraints on the transformation to sustainability. Two system-level predictors emerge as critical for steering the sector’s shift from incremental to disruptive innovation. Meta-trajectories reflect the potential to pivot toward transformative technologies such as hydrogen and electrification, while engagement captures the essential roles of public trust, financial alignment, and social legitimacy.