Airlines are desperate for a technological leap that will allow them to fly using less fuel, and with fewer emissions. With a few notable exceptions, such as the Anglo-French Concorde, jet-powered passenger aircraft have not departed greatly from the shape pioneered by the de Havilland Comet, the world’s first jet passenger aircraft which entered service in the 1950s.
Hydrogen-powered engines produce zero emissions, using the most abundant element in the universe, but hydrogen must be cooled to -253°C to make it liquid, massively increasing its energy density and making it a practical jet engine fuel, and that’s challenging.The Blended Wing Body aircraft is a radical departure from conventional aircraft. Shaped like a manta ray, the design is seamless. There is no distinct join between wings and fuselage, and no tail or rudder.
Bombardier has been testing its own BWB aircraft, the EcoJet, flight testing a much larger scale model with a 5.4 metre wingspan.Boeing, meanwhile, has flight tested several versions of its X-48 experimental unmanned aerial vehicle, built to test the flight characteristics of BWB aircraft. The latest version, the X-48C, has a wingspan of over six metres.
Now comes JetZero’s Pathfinder demonstrator, which received its airworthiness certificate from the US Federal Aviation Administration in March 2024, enabling the California-based aerospace company to begin test flights with a 1:8 scale model. The next step for JetZero is a full-scale demonstrator, helped along by a $US235 million contract from the US Air Force. Along with Airbus and Boeing, JetZero hopes to get a BWB aircraft into the air sometime in the next decade.
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