Lauren Rosenblatt
The Seattle Times
(TNS)

A new type of plane — one that has never carried commercial passengers — could take flight as soon as next year.

The concept has been in the works for decades, part of the industry’s continuous push to make planes more fuel-efficient to reduce emissions and fuel costs. But technology wasn’t quite ready, and the endeavor has been too risky to justify the sizable financial investment.

Now, a startup based in California is ready to try.

JetZero aims to fly its prototype for the first time next year and to carry paying passengers in the 2030s. This summer, in another sign the company is gaining momentum, JetZero broke ground on a sprawling manufacturing facility that could rival Boeing’s Everett factory in size.

By changing the shape of the plane, “you can change every problem of jetliners for the better,” Tom O’Leary, JetZero’s CEO and co-founder, said during a recent interview at the Farnborough International Airshow outside London.

“There’s lots to be done, and it costs a lot,” O’Leary said, but “we’ve brought this enterprise to the point where everybody understands that the business is real, it’s viable.”

Even with the first test flight on the books, JetZero faces a long road to getting passengers on its futuristic jet.

The company will have to prove that the concept saves as much fuel as it is promising and is up to the same safety standards as commercial planes flying today. It will need to prove it can build the planes at scale, without a price tag that will turn airlines away. It will need to make sure passengers are comfortable flying on the new design. And it can’t run out of money.

If JetZero succeeds, it could change the industry.

“The aerodynamic advantage is there; how to realize that is where the challenge remains,” said Carlos Cesnik, an aerospace engineering professor from the University of Michigan. “Until you actually fly and certify such a vehicle, there’s still a chance of something going wrong.”

A new type of aircraft

Commercial planes flying today are often called “tube-and-wing” aircraft, referring to the cylindrical fuselage sandwiched between two wings.

In that configuration, the wings provide lift and counteract drag from other parts of the plane, like the tail and sharp joints where parts of the aircraft are connected to one another. The fuselage doesn’t help with that lift.

In a blended-wing aircraft, the entire body of the aircraft generates lift, making the plane more fuel efficient.

The tube-and-wing design came about in part because it was easier to pressurize a cylinder compared to a more complex shape with twists and turns, said John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It was also easier to mold metals into clean-cut cylinders than other geometric designs. The tail, even though it adds drag, helps control and stabilize the aircraft.

Commercial airplane designers have studied the blended-wing concept for decades — including a former McDonnell Douglas researcher who studied the design before Boeing acquired the company in 1997.

Robert Liebeck, often considered the father of the blended wing, continued that work at Boeing after the acquisition; Boeing even considered using the futuristic configuration for its next-generation commercial plane in the early 2000s, according to media reports and aerospace experts who spoke to The Seattle Times.

Boeing ultimately abandoned those plans, likely considering the idea too costly and too risky as it balanced launching a new airplane while continuing to produce its existing models.

Without McDonnell Douglas pushing the competition, “it wasn’t clear it was worth it,” Hansman said. “It will take you so long to get the airplane designed, certified, approved … that basically you’re going to lose your business.”

Even after turning its attention toward other commercial models, Boeing continued to research the concept, including a six-year project with NASA that resulted in an autonomous blended wing-body plane called X-48. Boeing and NASA flew the aircraft more than 100 times before ending the project in 2013.

Airbus, Boeing’s European rival, similarly considered and shelved a blended-wing design.

On the startup side, another California-based company, Natilus, is working on two blended-wing planes to transport cargo and people. Seattle-based Outbound Aerospace was developing a blended-wing prototype but shut down last year when it ran out of funding.

Technology and manufacturing advancements have made the blended-wing concept more viable than ever before.

Composite materials — lightweight, durable materials to replace heavier metals like aluminum — have made it possible to design new configurations without adding weight to the aircraft. Advancements in flight control systems, including those used in commercial aircraft and in drones, could enable the industry’s departure from tube-and-wing and tail designs.

But a viable concept is far from a commercial product, Hansman from MIT said.

Safety regulators allow aircraft manufacturers to essentially cut some corners when designing prototypes meant to prove that the plane will fly and will offer the promised aerodynamic efficiencies. That means a lot of changes may still need to be made to ensure the prototype meets strict safety standards before the plane can fly with passengers on board.

“Flying a prototype is an important step, but it's a baby step,” Hansman said. “You’re probably only 10% of the way to airplane production.”

An ‘open palette’ opportunity

JetZero, founded in 2021, says it has built more than half of its prototype.

In June, it broke ground on a massive, 8-million-square-foot manufacturing facility in Greensboro, N.C., that it says will one day build 20 blended wing-body planes per month.

The factory could rival Boeing’s Everett facility, which spans more than 4 million square feet, and, with 472 million cubic feet of space, is considered the largest manufacturing facility in the world by volume. But JetZero plans to build its factory in phases over the next decade, with the first phase encapsulating 25% of the total planned project.

For now, it needs enough capacity to build seven airplanes — five for flight testing and two to test to their limits and ultimately destroy.

The company considered Washington for its manufacturing hub but the state didn’t make JetZero’s shortlist of 13 possible options, O’Leary said.

JetZero, founded by O’Leary and Mark Page, doesn’t consider Boeing a competitor. Instead, it's vying to be a second American commercial plane-maker and hopes to capture a market that it says is underserved.

Its commercial model will seat up to 250 people, putting its head count between Boeing’s narrowbody and widebody families. Boeing’s 757 used to fill that market, but the company stopped production in 2004. More than a decade later, Boeing considered developing another “middle-of-the-market” airplane but scrapped those plans after two fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 upended the company’s reputation, finances and regulatory standing.

Airbus’ A321XLR offers a similar midmarket product, and Boeing’s planned 737 MAX 10 could fill some of that gap.

Funding is the remaining question for JetZero, O’Leary said. The startup has raised more than $320 million in funding, according to a PitchBook estimate, including roughly $100 million in debt financing at the end of August.

The U.S. Air Force chose JetZero for a $235 million contract in 2023 to accelerate development of the company’s full-scale demonstrator, called Jet1. On the military side, JetZero’s blended-wing design could be considered for future aerial refueling tankers.

On the commercial side, JetZero is partnering with Delta Air Lines and has secured investments from United and Alaska Airlines, which signed up to receive the company’s first commercial delivery. The startup meets with its airline partners quarterly to discuss progress and development.

For Alaska, the new concept offers fuel efficiency savings that are “almost inconceivable,” as well as a blank slate for designing a new passenger experience, Pasha Saleh, Alaska’s head of corporate development, who oversees its venture capital arm, said in an August interview.

Each seat will have its own dedicated overhead bin, JetZero says, and passengers will board side-by-side, easing the bottleneck of today’s boarding experience.

The industry used to worry about the lack of windows but, with seat-back TV screens, phones and laptops, most now think passengers won’t mind the change.

It's not clear if passengers, particularly those sitting closest to the edges of the plane, will feel turbulence differently, or if airlines will need to adjust airport infrastructure to fit the blended-wing aircraft into existing slots.

Alaska has sent teams of flight attendants and cargo workers to JetZero’s mock-up in Long Beach, Calif. to study how to integrate the aircraft into its operations, Saleh said.

Walking into the cabin feels more like entering a movie theater than an airplane, he continued. It’s an “open palette” for interior design.

If JetZero’s blended-wing concept works, “when that works, Saleh said, if you’re an airline that doesn’t have an order for one of these, I can’t imagine how you’re going to stay competitive.”

Future possibilities

If JetZero succeeds, legacy aerospace companies like Boeing and Airbus will have to consider their next move. But, until then, they aren’t going to “compete with themselves,” said Cesnik, from the University of Michigan.

“Once a competitor like that comes along, and they start taking away significant market share, then these companies would respond,” Cesnik said.

If that market share is in the blended-wing market, then “yes, they will jump into the space,” he added.

Some aerospace experts floated that Boeing or Airbus may consider buying JetZero. Others said the startup must secure more government funding in order to stay afloat, letting the defense side shoulder the experimental cost and then transitioning to a commercial variant.

The Federal Aviation Administration will certify the aircraft in the same class as Boeing, Airbus and Brazilian plane-maker Embraer’s existing commercial planes, but it's not clear yet what that regulatory process will look like, how long it could take or how much it could cost.

It takes several billion dollars for an established manufacturer to certify new versions of the traditional tube-and-wing design; a new company certifying a new configuration is bound to cost significantly more.

The FAA said it doesn’t comment on certification projects.

JetZero said it expects there will be “changes and trades” as it moves from prototype to certification. It will be on a “parallel path” with the FAA, the company said in a statement to The Seattle Times, “documenting everything about the plane to show compliance to existing requirements and regulations.”

What is clear is the industry needs new, more fuel-efficient aircraft in the near future. That will take a radical design change, MIT's Hansman said.

The tube-and-wing aircraft are reaching a ceiling on improved fuel efficiency, he said. Investing in a risky design like the blended wing body, Hansman continued, “at some point, it will be worth it.”

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