It's shaped more like a boomerang than a conventional airliner and has passenger seating and the cargo hold integrated into the wing. Enter the Flying-V concept aircraft with an innovative design which, its developers hope, will revolutionise long-haul air travel with a drastically lower fuel burn and never-before-seen cabin environment. A prototype of the jet, which is being modelled by engineers at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in collaboration with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, completed its maiden flight during the summer. After a period of extensive wind tunnel evaluations and a series of ground tests, it got airborne for the first time, giving engineers a chance to monitor the flight characteristics. Efforts by the Netherlands-based group to develop the "highly energy-efficient long-distance aeroplane" have been under way since 2017, with the original idea developed by TU Berlin student Justus Benad during his thesis project at Airbus Hamburg.
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