Airbus Shows Zwilling, and Other Patents

11, 2012
Airbus and Boeing may happily be churning out
tube-and-wing, engine-under-wing airliners by
the dozen, but they are not stopping their
designers having the odd out-of-the-box
thought, as recent US patents show.
Airbus has been awarded a patent (8,157,204 ,
filed in 2008) for a "double fuselage aircraft" - a
high-capacity airliner that combines two
passenger-carrying fuselages with twin forward-
swept wings and turboprop propulsion.
(German WWII twin-fuselage aircraft were
called Zwilling , for "twin".)

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