Boeing and NASA are looking forward to the future with a jetliner design that looks back to the past by using a biplaine wing design, with over-the-fuselage wings and a truss supporting them from below.
It’s an update of a study that’s been going on for ten years as part of a Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research program. This version is called the Transonic Truss-Braced Wing, and shows a plane with a wingspan a bit larger than that of a 767, capable of flying just below the speed of sound and burning 60% less fuel than 2005 models. There’s no final data yet for a comparison with today’s more efficient planes.
While there’s no actual plan to build the plane, design studies such as this often influence the building of future models. Much of the design work that went into Boeing’s abandoned studies of a supersonic plane eventually became part of the 787 Dreamliner project.
