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I was looking for a reference to Boeing's Blended Wing Body (BWB) when I posted the previous message, now I've found it. 800 passengers. Deciding if it's a good idea or not is left as an exercise for the reader.

Yes, it was nicknamed "Concordski", at least in the UK. One crashed at the air show in Paris in 1973.

You can find out more about Concordski here and here.

'NC' is the prefix for US registered aircraft
Here's some information about how the abbreviation works.

This revolutionary blended wing design, called BWB for short, was conceived by the McDonnell Douglas Corporation and now proposed by Boeing

For more information on flying wing stability, here is a talk by Jack Northrop to the the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Jack provides a very thorough discussion of lateral stability (your "hunting" problem) in the latter parts of his talk, where he describes a simple method to solve this, without computers:

For special occasions, when particular airplane steadiness is required (such as a bombing run), it is probable that the equivalence of such damping in yaw may be supplied by an automatic pilot, or by temporarily increasing the drag at the wing tips. This latter effect can be accomplished on the XB-35 by simultaneously opening both rudders and gives deadbeat damping in yaw.

For you non-aeronautical engineers, "deadbeat damping" means "rock-solid stable". The "rudders" he talks about are split flaps at the wing-tips, same as those used on the B-2.

The real problem with a BWB as I see it is the wingspan and the position of the passenger doors -- how the heck is that thing going to fit into most terminals? The link shows a planform comparison of the BWB with a 747-400; the 747-400 wingspan is much smaller, 212 feet compared to the BWB at 289 feet. Regular 747 wingspan is 195 feet.

This is a fundemental problem -- if an airline can't fit the thing into its hub-airport terminals, they're just not going to buy it, no matter what its other benefits.

On potential problem with this plane is its size -- the footprint diagram shows it to be considerably wider than a 747. The 747 is already at the width limit most airports can accomodate; that's one reason the wingtips on the newer generation 747's flip up rather than just extending further. The terminals reach out to service two 747's side by side. This plane would require major construction at any airport it landed at.

I can just imagine the noise from one or three of those made big enough to push this thing along ;-))

And no, I wouldn't ride on one either...my baby bottle was warmed on the cooling fins of a Stinson Flying Station Wagon. My first hours as a co-pilot were in a Cessna 180. I like to see what's up there.

http://aerosite.net/bwb.htm

The cool thing is that the passenger model should seet 800+

Just think of the mess in the boarding area!