China's new 800-seat plane concept has the aviation industry looking twice, and in this video I want to show you why a set of drawings is causing such a stir. Eight hundred passengers is roughly ten full double-decker buses emptying into one aircraft, and some of these designs barely look like a plane at all.

Before the hype runs away with itself, I'll be straight with you about what actually exists and what doesn't. We'll look at why the Airbus A380 could carry a crowd this size yet still fell out of favour, and why a shape borrowed from something closer to a manta ray might change the maths. There are six reasons this matters, and I'm keeping the most personal one for the end.

There's also a British thread running through the whole story, and it isn't wishful thinking. It lives in a few very specific places on the map of this country, and once you see them, the future of the giant airliner looks rather different.

Would you fly in a windowless middle cabin for a cheaper ticket? Tell me in the comments, and subscribe if you enjoy seeing where Britain fits into the world's biggest engineering ideas.

Sources:

• COMAC (Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China) — C919, ARJ21 and C929 programmes

• China Eastern Airlines — C919 entry into passenger service, May 2023

• Airbus — A380 programme and final delivery to Emirates, 2021

• Airbus — MAVERIC blended wing body demonstrator, 2019

• NASA — X-48 blended wing body research programme with Boeing

• Airbus UK — Broughton wing manufacturing and Filton wing design sites

• Rolls-Royce — Trent 900 engine for the A380

• Rolls-Royce — UltraFan demonstrator first run, 2023

• CFM International (GE and Safran) — LEAP engine

• EASA and FAA certification standards — 90-second emergency evacuation requirement

#Aviation #COMAC #BlendedWing #A380 #Airbus #RollsRoyce #ChinaAviation #FutureOfFlight #Aerospace #BritishEngineering