Quote Originally Posted by fixeagle View Post
Good day all! I found myself wondering today... what is the future of commercial aviation? The aviation community has made wonderful strides in terms of efficiency and safety. However, no major changes to the way we know and understand commercial aviation have been made in decades.

So I ask... if you could look through a crystal ball, what is your view of commercial aviation in, say, the year 2040?

Cheers all!

David
Hello David,

we are currently looking in to, as stated here in this post, more efficient aircraft (i.e. maximizing efficiency). There are many ways to complete this but that's easier said than done; one way is looking into structure. Look into the joined-wing aircraft which was patented by Wolkovitch years ago. An unfortunate drawback to aircraft such as this (also another aircraft being researched, the oblique wing) is appearance: not everyone wants to ride in a "weird" loooking airplane as was the case when canards first arose. I can almost guarantee that we will still be using the "cigar" shaped fuselage at 2040, just running better numbers where possible (e.g. loading/unloading passenger times).

Hope this helped a bit.

Regards.