I'm not sure how fast, practical, efficient or safe this design is. Just going back to slower turboprops could save on fuel. As far as a flying model goes, I'm not sure this proves anything. I have seen models of Snoopy's dog house fly.

Twenty percent better fuel consumption is significant. Every single day there are thousands of aircraft in the skies, and any constructive improvement is definitely a good thing, even though it looks like a flying brick with wings. lol I'm confident the engineers at Airbus know what they're doing.

@Nobody: more passengers stuffed on to the flights to optimize profit is the goal here. Cram 'em in there like sardines and rake in the bux.

I wonder why they say 'there's more room for passengers?' Looking at one of the artists rendition pics, the majority of the seats are still too close together. Don't know how that is going to stop people feeling claustrophobic. Nice aircraft, although, I expect it will be a better cargo plane than passenger plane, what with the greedy need of airlines to fix max pax inside them.

I look forward to the day when reverse acronyms are a thing of the past.

Why not just design a three dimensional wing and fuselage that wraps 360 degrees that makes a flying saucer shape and then it can fly any direction it wants instantly by rotating jet engine thrust around centered vector. Then UFOs would be commonplace.

Excuse me, I need to go to the restroom. Twenty people get out of their seats.

Nice plane, stupid idea. I remember looking at Boeing's design back in 1995. The reason this won't be implemented is simple, 1 word, airports. You would have to widen all the runways at any airport you plane to have these operate at and change the terminals to accommodate these planes. I don't see that happening anywhere especially since many international airports just went through upgrades and the average international airport that can accept 747s and A380s cost well into the billions of dollars to build. The other reason is liability, 1 of these goes down and per passenger liability (ppl) would destroy the airline and manufacturer. PPL in the USA last time I checked was at $10 million. Add all the other passenger risk factors and it's not worth the upgrade, unless you bribe enough government officials to make the change at taxpayers cost. Even then, it's still not worth the headache for a leading manufacturer already selling 2 proven planes to do the same job of this 1.

Looks a lot like the Boeing blended wing demonstrator... a LOT like it. Look up the Boeing X-48. It is natural they would both gravitate to a similar design though. This concept, pressurization issues aside, has a huge interior volume and the lift area to match. Lots of steerage can be crammed into one of these babies! :-)

I hope theygive due credit to NASA... they designed the original. This looks like a carbon copy.