Boeing has been mostly quiet on its future narrowbody thinking, though a recently revealed patent, filed in November 2009 and made public last month, may illuminate the airframer’s thinking about how to replace the 737 with a composite aircraft and give its most important narrowbody customer, Southwest Airlines, the plane it’s been begging for.
Titled Weight-optimizing internally pressurized composite-body aircraft fueselages having near-elliptical cross sections, or WIPCAFHNECS as I prefer to call it, is the work of Boeing engineers Mithra Sankrithi and Kevin Retz. Retz and Sankrithi have come up with several methods of developing a composite fuselage design to accommodate a seven-abreast 2-3-2 twin-aisle configuration ideal for quick loading of passengers and cargo.
This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.
This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.