Airbus filed patent for highly unusual aircraft with vertical take-off and landing

Airbus filed a patent for an unusual type of aircraft that’s theoretically capable of taking off vertically.

The idea is to take off and land vertically, and then transition to horizontal flight in the air.

It’s a clever system, but as you can imagine, it’s much easier said than done.

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Airbus planes are perfectly capable of taking off so sharply that it almost looks like they’re taking off vertically.

We’ve seen it done with the Airbus A321 at this year’s Farnborough Airshow, and we’ve also seen it with the larger A380.

But this is something else.

With this new technology, the plane could—in theory—act exactly like a helicopter upon take-off and landing.

The idea behind the ‘vertical Airbus’?

Rotors provide vertical life during take off and landing.

Then, once the plane reaches the desired altitude, the rotors are stowed away inside the wings.

After that, once the plane reaches its destination and needs to land, the same thing will happen in reverse.

The idea is to give the plane a forward-facing propeller when the plane flies horizontally.

It’s important to note that Airbus isn’t (yet) considering this idea for anything other than short routes.

Would this work?

Aerospace manufacturers have been trying to figure out a way to reduce the need for large runways for ages.

Several ideas have been thrown against the wall for a while but nothing ever sticks.

Airbus’ idea certainly sounds interesting, but we should also point out that they filed this patent over seven years ago.

This is something they have been working on since but, for now at least, it doesn’t look like any significant progress is being made.

Maybe that’ll change in the next 10 years.