Future stringent emissions regulations will require more accurate emissions prediction capability. To reduce design risk, emissions prediction capability must be brought forward to the conceptual design phase, to allow for system level assessments and to allow for parametric variations in combustor geometry for different low-emissions combustor architectures. Until recently, due to the complexity of combustion processes, no suitable methods have been available for emissions prediction for systems-level conceptual design. However in recent years chemical reactor network-based models, in which the combustion processes are represented by a network of idealized chemical reactors, have been developed. These models have been shown to be useful in a “post-dictive” mode of operation where they have been tailored to match measured data. This paper explores the potential application of such chemical reactor network-based emissions models in a predictive mode to support aircraft conceptual design studies. A number of issues related to this application are examined, and areas for future research are recommended.