CFRP was the prime choice for the airframe of the latest aircraft of Boeing and Airbus. However, modern aluminium alloys were developed with improved cost-performance relationships, and, in addition, todays CFRP manufacturing technology is not fully ready for high production rates of shortand medium-range aircraft. Furthermore, the light weight design potential of today's CFRP airframe is heavily penalised by additional system installation effort, which is necessary due to the poor electrical conductivity of CFRP compared to aluminium or fibre metal laminate such as Glare ® . For the next generation of aircraft, it is necessary to reduce material cost and airframe manufacturing cost, and to improve the added product value by additional functions such as electrical conductivity. This chapter reveals latest R&D results to enable cost-effective thermoplastic composite airframe structures with blends, more electrically conductive and more damage tolerant composites with metal fibre reinforcements and up-stream research for different use cases of morphing structures by means of shaped memory alloy wire integration.