Here’s another one of those “I was sure I’d posted it before, but now can’t seem to find it” items…
A 1948 promo video by Northrop showing a mockup of a passenger compartment to be built into a B-49-style flying wing. Very spacious, and with one heck of a view to the front and rear, but of course none to the side. The idea of flying wing airliners keeps popping up, but also keeps never happening. There are several decent reasons for this:
1) It’s more difficult to pressurize the non-cylindrical passenger compartment, meaning that it’ll weigh more (and thus negate some of the weight savings of using a flying wing)
2) Configurations like this won’t fit quite so conveniently at most airports. The jetways will have a hard time mating up.
3) Most of the passengers won’t have any sort of view at all, it’d be like flying in a cargo container.
4) The further a passenger is left or right from the centerline, the more disconcerting and uncomfortable rolling maneuvers will be for them.
5) It’s different. The Dash-80 (the prototype for what became the KC-135 and 707) set the basic configuration for the modern jetliner in 1954… 60 years ago. The most modern jetliners don’t really look any different. And like it or not, “convention” matters.
Northrop drawings of this jetliner are HERE.
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