WITH a huge bulbous cabin, massive sweeping wings and enough space for 755 passengers – it’s clear to see why this concept plane is dubbed the “Sky Whale”.
Boarding the aircraft ahead of a long haul flight, you would find three huge decks with up to five rows of seats – including a lavish top floor business class complete with “sky view” roof windows.
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And when it comes time to take off, long gone are the days of waiting to taxi down the long runways at airports like Gatwick and Heathrow.
Instead, the enormous AWWA Sky Whale lumbers itself into position before its massive engines pivot at a 45 degree angle like a Harrier jump jet fighter plane.
It then begins to move and the swivelled engines boost forward, allowing the mammoth machine to take off at a near vertical climb.
And this incredible feature allows to Sky Whale to not be restricted to big airports, with it only need enough space for its 288 foot wingspan and 252 foot length.
Its incredible size would make it one of the biggest passenger planes ever built – edging out the Airbus A380-800 which comes in at 240ft and the 230ft Boeing 747.
And it is hoped to hit top speeds of more than 620mph – comparable to other large airliners.
The Sky Whale is the dream of Spanish designer Oscar Vinals – and since first unveiling the concept eight years ago he has seen a flood of interest in the plane.
Oscar even saw a model of his design recently featured at the exhibition on future transport at the Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre in Kuwait.
“Investment companies or personal investors with a great capability of investment [are interested],” he told The Sun Online.
“Also, aeronautical professionals and aeronautical students, institutions as universities, academies of sciences or little start-ups.”
Passengers on board would have all the comforts of a traditional airliner – as well as other high tech benefits.
Travellers would be split into “tourist class”, “business class” and “first class” across the the triple decker plane.
The top class would have sky views out of the rooftop windows which could change their opacity to control light in the cabin.
Oscar told The Sun Online: “Thanks to a big area for passengers this airplane could be like an upper class flying hotel.
“[It could] have all kinds of facilities like a gym, saloon, spa, etc in order that the flight hours go by rapidly.”
Disruptive concepts like this one inspire change, and help us push innovation forward and better solutions in
Oscar Vinals
It would be powered by four giant hybrid electric engines – two built into the wings and two built into the tail.
And the ring-like structure around the plane is designed with safety in mind, says Oscar.
He hopes that should the plane get into trouble, the whale shaped fuselage would break way like an escape pod.
And its hope that this self-contained crash structure separated from the potentially dangerous engines could help save lives.
Oscar told The Sun Online his future concept is based in reality – being a mix between modern planes and theoretical technologies.
And across the aircraft would be solar panels to help fuel the hybrid engines and the rest of the plane’s systems.
He told The Sun Online: “Disruptive concepts like this one inspire change, and help us push innovation forward and better solutions in order to reduce environment impact [currently produced] by airplanes.”
The designer believes his concept would feature a reduced weight, reduced fuel consumption, reduced drag and reduced noise.
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All of this would contribute to an all round more efficient aircraft that could in theory mean cheaper plane tickets for punters.
Sky Whale could carry more passengers than the A380-800 and the Boeing 747, with typical layouts holding the 469 and 416 people.
It all sounds like a revolutionary design – but so far no one has committed to building and testing one of Oscar’s monster machines.
He however hopes that as these technologies develop, his design will be picked up and one day take to the skies.
He explained his design is currently on “standby” as he believes right now companies are focused on smaller airplanes.
But he hopes in a few years time “big” planes will make a return as the number of people needing to travel increasings and amount of planes in the sky becomes a problem.
The designer even pointed to the buzz around the outlandish Sky Cruise “flying hotel” as proof that there remains interest in these massive airliners.
“So, maybe in a few years the Sky Whale could return,” he told The Sun Online.
Oscar first became interested in airliners as a hobby – with his main career working as a designer in high performance cars and motorsport.
He said: “I became interested in aeronautics, after a bad experience during a flight that fortunately ended only in a big scare.
“My interest in knowing more about airplanes and all their aspects became in a more serious ‘hobby’ and with the goal of trying to ‘improve’ future commercial airplanes, designing concepts based on my personal studies about them and how it would be possible to get a feasible design.
“I don’t design concepts merely to be only beautiful or for a sci-fi experience, all projects are based on a previous technician studies with a lot of accurate information, so the result is a realistic and feasible concept.”
It comes after we revealed the incredible concept design of the AeroCon Wingship, an extraordinary 3,000 passenger design for a massive ekranoplan flying boat.
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