Will the new incarnation of the Flying V bring a revolution in aviation, or maybe, like the 1958 electric guitar model bearing the same nickname, initially successfully divide the public opinion?
The idea for the Flying-V plane comes from the work of one of the students of the Technical University of Berlin, Justus Benad, who is looking for theoretical possibilities to increase the efficiency of commercial passenger flights. And when we compare its design with the Airbus A350, a medium-sized wide-body long-range airliner, it turns out that this one offers a 10% increase in aerodynamic excellence, i.e. lift / drag ratio, 2% less weight, simple to configure and definitely quieter.
Work on this concept has been going on for some time, but only now we got to know more details and we have the opportunity to see what it should look like in practice. The small prototype has just been tested. It has a wingspan of 3.06 m, a length of 2.76 m and a weight of 22.5 kg.
The specific design requires, for example, the integration of the cabin, cargo hold and fuel tanks with each wing, but their span is consistent with, for example, the already mentioned Airbus A350, so the new model could use the existing aviation infrastructure, including airports, while offering such the same load capacity and number of places, which significantly increases the chances of its commercialization.
According to Dr. Roelof Vos from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands: “The Flying-V is even smaller than the A350, which results in less drag and allows less fuel to be used over the same distance. More specifically, this aerodynamic shape and reduced weight mean up to 20% less fuel consumption than the Airbus A350-900, which can be a very effective incentive. When it comes to specific dimensions, the Flying-V is 55 meters long and 17 meters high, and its wingspan is 65 meters.
All this translates into 314 passengers and 160 cubic meters of cargo to carry. The plane will be powered by performance-enhancing kerosene turbofan engines, but will see improvements in the future to make it more environmentally friendly. The only question is whether it has a chance to fly and when will it do so? We will definitely not get on board the Flying-V soon, because when it comes to passenger safety, all projects must undergo many years of restrictive research and tests, and in the case of the Flying-V, the first of them is to relate to the stability and reliability of the concept at low speeds.