Plane sailing: the seaplane of the future?

Classic flying boats lost popularity  in the 1950s because they were inefficient compared with more aerodynamic airliners able to fly large numbers of passengers directly to land-based airports.

However, as rules on pollution and noise get ever tougher, limiting expansion at many major airports, the flying boat could be on its way back.

Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a design concept for a transatlantic flying boat that would move  the low-level flight paths of large aircraft offshore, away from heavily populated areas.

The design uses a blended wing body and looks far removed from classic flying boats with V-shaped hulls such as the Short Sunderland, the Saunders-Roe Princess or the Hughes H-4 Hercules ‘Spruce Goose’, but it does meet all airworthiness requirements.

“What we really wanted to do with this project is take a look whether the application  of new technology, and the new ideas coming into industry such as blended wing bodies, would actually result in an aircraft that is designed both conceptually, so in the overall configuration, and in the preliminary design process, that can actually alleviate the historical downsides of a flying boat,” said Dr Errikos Levis, a teaching fellow at Imperial’s Department of Aeronautics.