KLM funds new "Flying-V" plane design where passengers sit inside the wings

Good luck convincing Qantas that they wouldn’t just keep returning to the airport.

14 Likes

The no-separation-between-fuel-tanks-and-passengers has me a little concerned. Seems like the chances of an otherwise nonfatal crash to become fatal would go way up.

2 Likes

This! Very much this.

I am NOT flying on one of those if any of the current Flying V users are in charge!

(Possible exception for Bruce Dickinson even though he is a singer rather than a guitarist - but at least he knows how to fly an airliner!
NB John Travolta does not count.)

1 Like

Passenger riding in the wings? This cat got there FIRST.

13 Likes

They’d need side thrusters? :wink:

Seriously, though, I’d hazard a guess it might be something to do with structural stresses and/or rudder-induced yawing automatically creating banking motion which it would be fuel inefficient to counter. But I am not an aviation expert!!

… and then I found this (which does not address stresses) from NASA - for schoolkids - but it does say rudder makes it yaw
https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/yaw.html

1 Like

Drag, aerodynamics. The plane is pushing air out of the way as it moves forward. If you can keep the cross-sectional area of the plane constant, or at least closer to constant there will be less drag.

So a regular airplane, the initial work of pushing air out of the way is at the nose, then its all clear sailing till the air reaches the wings - OUCH! So much new area to push air out of the way…

Now look at the V design. Once you get past the nose, the profile of the two legs of the V are the same all the way back, because there is nothing filling in the V. No change in cross section, no increase in drag.

Look at some early supersonic jets - they had what was called a “coke-bottle” design, where the body necked down and got skinny in the same place the wing was the widest. This could reduce air pressure enough to let them break the sound barrier.

3 Likes

OMG - had to fast forward for the happy ending.

Though to be fair, if the cat didn’t have this on its tail, it isn’t really the pilots fault.

11 Likes

I might pay extra for the “enhanced-motion” seats!

2 Likes

I’m used to flying space ships in Elite Dangerous. They have 6DOF in maneuvering thrusters as well as pitch roll and yaw. So I have no feel for what a plane does.

1 Like

Anything but the 737 Max!

1 Like

Sure! But, 40 years ago, I was certain I’d be taking one to work today.

3 Likes

How about Brian May?

4 Likes

Only if he builds it.

5 Likes

Are you OK with foxes and badgers along for the ride?

2 Likes

Ah - had forgotten about him. (Cue umpteen others being suggested.)

But he winds hs own pickups, FFS! Come on, you really want that level of ‘personalisation’ in a flying machine? :wink:

Was going to wonder if he actually played a Flying V, but Google was my friend.

  1. Crappy video, and ancient as hell, Flying V action starts at 59 seconds.

2. A picture and a fact:

ETA @GutRot - no - quite the opposite! :wink:

2 Likes

It does raise the issue, though, that the wingspan is about halfway back on the A350, not all up front where it wouldn’t fit among the ground equipment/infrastructure. Maybe they’ve allowed for this, but still, even the narrow part of the wedge is wider than the front of a present-day fuselage. (It’s why, I imagine, they’d also have trouble with canards, assuming those have some kind of advantage (outside of politics)).

2 Likes

Surely they’ve allowed for it, as you say.

(And the canard is most likely a red herring!) :wink:
(Ducks and gets his coat.)

4 Likes

If the fuel goes up, I’m not sure that ‘otherwise nonfatal’ obtains.

2 Likes

Or as we called them in the good old days. Inherently unstable.

1 Like

How about we bring back my favorite weird craft, the Ekranoplan

7 Likes