Southern California start-up Natilus has emerged with a blended wing-body (BWB) aircraft design it believes will upend decades of tube-and-wing dominance in the commercial jet market.
“When we started the company, we always knew that we were going to go after the passenger market at some point,” says chief executive and co-founder Aleksey Matyushev. ”We wanted to get the timing right. Especially for big projects such as these, you really need to scale up in capital and personnel.
“If you time it incorrectly, as we’ve seen between Boeing and Airbus and Embraer, you could really trip over and fall quickly.”
Based in San Diego, lower-emission-aircraft developer Natilus has been progressing its conceptual autonomous cargo aircraft, Kona, for which it has secured dozens of tentative orders from cargo operators.
And now it is going bigger with Horizon, a conceptual 200-passenger aircraft unveiled last month.
Matyushev tells FlightGlobal that a couple of Natilus’ potential airline customers approached the start-up and asked if it can adapt its products for the large narrowbody market.
“We spent about two or three weeks doing a little soul-searching, but also on the technical side, to really see if this is the right time, whether we have all the pieces together to actually enter the market,” he says. “Unequivocally, we said yes.”
The leap from an autonomous cargo aircraft to a large narrowbody-sized aircraft is not intimidating to Matyushev, who points to Kona’s wingspan of about 26m (85ft). Horizon’s design calls for a roughly 36m wingspan.
“It seems daunting to go from a small airplane to this larger airplane, but when you think about the dimensions, it’s not that much bigger,” he says.
Natilus has been developing its Horizon platform for nearly a year. It envisions a passenger aircraft operated by a single pilot, with aerodynamic efficiency that will halve the emissions of current-generation narrowbody jets.
CHALLENGING STATUS QUO
Matyushev believes there is room for another OEM to challenge Airbus and Boeing in the large narrowbody aircraft market – particularly for newcomers that help the commercial aviation industry reach its lofty pollution-reduction goals.
He says sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has been touted as the “promised land” by airlines with aggressive mandates to cut carbon emissions. But the early promise of SAF has faded as underlying economics remain unfavourable.
“As we start looking at SAF closer and closer, a lot of us in the industry – not only the investors but also the investors and the airframers – are starting to see the writing on the wall that scaling SAF is incredibly difficult, and it will not be cost-effective for a very long time,” Matyushev says. “I think people are going back to the drawing board and asking, ‘What else can we do?’
“The question goes back into hydrogen and then airframes.”
He envisions Horizon carving out an entirely new niche in the airline sector by offering variation beyond “the way that the cabin lays out”.
“The blended wing-body is such a great platform for these next-generation ideas – specifically hydrogen, which is very volume-centric,” he says. “It kind of hones in on that idea that you can actually fit hydrogen and still perform the same missions.”
Matyushev points to GE Aerospace going “all-in” on its open-fan concept engine, which it is developing under CFM International’s Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines programme. GE and partner Safran Aircraft Engines, which co-own CFM, aim for RISE to produce a powerplant that is 20% more efficient than today’s turbofans, with a goal of powering the next generation narrowbody jets produced by Airbus and Boeing.
GE Aerospace is working through technical issues related to adapting its open fan – which lacks nacelles and containment rings of current turbofans – for under-wing configurations, and plans to run two of the world’s fastest computers in 2025 to help model aircraft-engine integration.
A BWB aircraft could be an ideal platform for an open-fan engine, actually enabling a shift to new powerplants, Matyushev says. ”It not only is moving away from the traditional tube-and-wing but also setting up a platform for what the next generation of ideas could be.”
Horizon will be capable of flying passengers up to 3,500nm (6,482km), Natilus says, which compares to the Boeing 737 Max 8’s range of 3,300-3850nm.
“What’s really interesting is that it doesn’t feel like that range has been really used in a lot of these airlines,” he says. “It’s just due to comfort on the passenger side because, essentially, that will get you from North America over to Europe, which is what the [Airbus A321]XLR is supposed to do.
“But I think enhancing passenger comfort is part of those really long trips, and that’s where the blended wing-body comes in as well. We can offer more leg room, more cavernous environments and maybe some amenities.”
TALL TASKS
Natilus is not the only developer exploring the potential efficiencies of BWB aircraft designs, which has been studied by NASA for decades.
US start-up JetZero has been flying a subscale model of its envisioned Pathfinder aircraft, which is to carry 250 passengers. That company is working with the US Air Force (USAF) to develop a full-scale prototype of the design, and in August secured a $235 million USAF award to advance the project.
“Blown-lift” aircraft developer Electra also recently rolled out its vision for a commercial aircraft capable of carrying 200 passengers, which it will develop alongside NASA and other partners, intending to impact the market mid-century.
Meanwhile, for several years Bombardier has been studying a BWB business jet under its EcoJet programme, though CEO Eric Martel has said his company is unlikely to roll out such an aircraft any time soon.
While BWB designs do promise improved aerodynamic efficiency, they also pose notable challenges. For starters, the designs have complex aerodynamics that require unique aircraft control laws. Also, non-cylindrical fuselages can be tricky to pressurise, can require more structural reinforcement and can pose manufacturing challenges, particularly at high rates.
Natilus is starting small with Kona, an optionally piloted cargo aircraft with a targeted payload of 3,800kg (8,378lb) and range of 900nm.
“It’s got the bones to be fully autonomous, just depending on the customer, the geographic region as well as the mission they want to fly,” Matyushev says of Kona. “There are also quite a bit of defence applications with the optionally piloted angle.”
The start-up disclosed in May that it had partnered with advanced propulsion developer ZeroAvia to provide optional hydrogen propulsion on its Kona platform.
“They still have more work to do on their propulsion, but it’s slowly getting to the point where it’s becoming commercialised,” he says. “What we’re thinking between their roadmap and ours is that we likely will debut the airplane with traditional Jet A or SAF, and then kind of move it to hydrogen depending the customer’s needs as well as what is available on the infrastructure side.”
In a challenging fund-raising environment that has seen faltering from ambitious aircraft developers such as Germany’s Lilium and the UK’s Vertical Aerospace, Matyushev acknowledges that securing enough capital will be critical for pushing Kona and Horizon through development, certification and production.
“We have some exciting announcements which we will make hopefully over the next three or four months,” he says. “One of the big challenges in start-ups such as ours, you know, people believe they need to look like a Boeing, so you need to have 5,000 engineers working for you. Does that really create the better alternative to get the product out to market?”
Natilus employs about 15 people, with plans to soon ramp up to about 50 workers.
Matyushev says that Natilus is about 24 months away from first flight with a full-scale Kona prototype. The company has completed the aircraft’s tail and control surfaces, in addition to an iron bird test rig.
“We are just waiting for the big pieces of carbon [composite] to arrive, as well as the engines,” he says. “Those are the two main pieces being pushed onto our suppliers right now.”
Natilus had considered building subscale prototypes but found that the cost difference between a three-quarter- and full-scale aircraft negligible.
The company claims to hold about 400 pre-orders for Kona, and Matyushev says the first customer deliveries are targeted to begin in early 2028.
