JetZero seeks comfy cabins, fuel efficiency with blended wing design

“We’ve been trapped in a tube; this changes everything.” That’s the pitch JetZero CEO Tom O’Leary brings to the table as his company aims to deliver a blended wing body aircraft to the commercial market. The effort is filled with challenges at every turn, but when it comes to the interior the JetZero team believes it can deliver a truly revolutionary product, more spacious for passengers and more efficient for airlines.

JeZero’s blended wing design delivers roughly the same floor space – about 2,400 square feet – as a 787-8. And, like most aircraft manufacturers, JetZero is keen to highlight the flexibility its design offers for passenger accommodation. The company hosted an open house at its Long Beach Airport headquarters, alongside the APEX EXPO  last month, offering an opportunity to see what the cabin can deliver.

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This included a full-size mockup of the cabin interior, allowing attendees to walk through the physical space rather than just examining renderings on a screen. A large chunk of the mockup was displaced by a bar, something none of the attendees complained about. But JetZero still managed to show off a range of seating options and other design considerations.

Many More Aisles Available

For Glen Noda, JetZero’s Head of Product Design, the physical layout opens up significant opportunities. Just like with a traditional aircraft design Noda looks for “wasted” space on board and unique ways to make it valuable to the airlines. This includes having the lavatories “bleed” into the wing box, something not possible in a traditional cabin layout.

It also means a single galley on board, at the center of the triangle, to serve all passengers. With exits to the front and rear the physical space seems to mostly work. The logistics of how many crew can be in the galley and how they would stagger service to meet the different cabin needs is less clear. But JetZero has plenty of time to work that out.

The company is also working on how seats will be arranged on board. It sees six “bays” inside the cabin, each able to accommodate a set of seats. The forward section of the plane, between the boarding doors, features one bay on each side, angled towards the nose. These bays would be configured as the premium seats by most airlines. The aforementioned galley sits between them.

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The rear box – the economy class section – is where things become extra interesting. Rather than a single or double aisle layout the JetZero design brings four aisles on board. The bays are similar in size to the forward section, with seating flexibility a key consideration. A 1-2 premium economy cabin could be located adjacent to a 2-2 economy class space, for example.

The bays are separated by structural columns on board. That forces airlines to respect the dimensions of the space and limits the opportunities to cram more seats into any specific area, something airlines are rarely shy about trying.

In a 2-2 layout the seats clock in at 19.5″ wide, a luxurious amount of space. Even in the 2-3 layout the company expects a 17.5″ width, on par with most long-haul seats flying today. Noda notes that the 2-3 layout significantly reduces the available range because of the increased seat count and payload. The cabin mockups generally started at 32″ for the minimum pitch, stretching to 38″ for the most premium of economy cabins. And because each bay is limited in length, it is hard to squeeze an extra row in by trimming the pitch further, though perhaps not impossible.

What About Windows?

The aircraft will have windows between the two forward sets of doors, allowing passengers in the forward seating areas to see outside. The aft area – with its four aisles – offers no such option. Noda, however, insists the company “is not worried about no windows.”

Emirates somewhat famously offers a first class suite on its 777 fleet with high sidewalls, preventing passengers from seeing outside. It offsets this by adding a digital window – an entertainment screen fed by cameras on board – in the suite. Noda says JetZero wants to do more than that, thanks to a design that considers digital entertainment and information options from day one.

The promise of digital technology integrated into the design from the original blueprints sounds great. But it is still not clear what that means for passengers on board, and likely won’t be for a couple years yet.

Will it Work?

JetZero is targeting the middle-of-market segment, aiming to carry about 250 passengers on long-ish trips. The plane fits in the same footprint on the ground as a 787 or 767, the types it aims to supplant, while promising a 40% reduction in fuel consumption, even with today’s engines. That’s a huge win for the industry, but it comes with challenges.

The first aircraft to be built – assuming the program gets that far – will be for the US Air Force. Those come with a very different set of design needs and other considerations (i.e. a refueling boom was in the hangar, along with cabin mockups). But if the company can get that far the adaptations for commercial service should not be too hard to deliver.

And JetZero has airline partners and investors. So at least theoretically there is a willingness from the industry to give it a try. Still, convincing a couple hundred passengers to sit in a windowless box for several hours of flying remains a tall ask. Perhaps a decade from now the fuel efficiency consideration will be enough for passengers to overcome that obstacle.

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