China unveils flying-wing airliner for 800+ passengers — wider than B-2 bomber

Chinese researchers have unveiled an aerodynamic model of a passenger aircraft designed to carry more than 800 people, South China Morning Post reports.

Unlike conventional airliners with a fuselage, wings and tail, most of the aircraft's structure is merged into a single wide lifting body — a "flying wing" configuration. The aircraft measures 85 meters in width and 43 meters in length, with a wingspan roughly 1.6 times that of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, which also uses the flying-wing layout. For reference, the largest passenger jet today, the Airbus A380, typically seats around 555 passengers.

The concept was developed by the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center (CARDC), a state-run scientific institution that has contributed to major aviation projects, including the narrow-body C919 airliner and the Y-20 transport aircraft.

China is also actively advancing the 280-seat wide-body long-range C929, whose first flight is scheduled for 2030, and is working on a supersonic passenger jet called C949, which shares design parallels with Lockheed Martin's X-59 developed under NASA's program.

The new flying-wing passenger aircraft has no official name yet. Developers describe it as a pioneering project exploring even more radical configurations. The design serves as a standard model for testing wind tunnels, computational methods, and test equipment for long and slender fuselages.