Move Over Guitars, There’s a Flying V Airplane Now

“The Flying V” certainly helped the guitar industry take off in a new direction, but can the “Flying V” actually fly? Dutch airline KLM has teamed up with researchers at Delft University of Technology to try out the “Flying V” design for future air travel.

According to CNN, researchers recently conduced a successful maiden flight of the Flying-V with a 22.5kg and 3-meter scale model airplane as they continue development on the air travel vehicle.

The “Flying V” would actually place the passenger cabin, cargo hold and the fuel tank within the wings of the plane. And while it may look really cool, there’s is a reasoning why this design may be functionally superior as well. Experts are estimating that the aerodynamic shape will cut fuel consumption by 20 percent over the current aircrafts of today.

Researchers have been working with their scaled model on such tasks as takeoffs, flight maneuvers and approaches and landings. “One of our worries was that the aircraft might have some difficulty lifting-off, since previous calculations had shown that ‘rotation’ could be an issue,” Roelof Vos, assistant professor at the aerospace engineering faculty of Delft’s University of Technology, who led the project, explained in a statement. “The team optimized the scaled flight model to prevent the issue but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. You need to fly to know for sure.”

While the successful test flight is a positive step toward eventually creating the design, the researchers are still learning and changing things along the way as new data becomes available from the tests.

Watch a pair of videos from KLM and Delft University of Technology as well as Cities of the Future to get a closer view at what the final design will look like below.