Pretty Planes of the future The Airbus Maveric on Test

 It looks like a flying wedge - known in the trade as a blended-wing design.

Airbus calls the remote-controlled aircraft Maveric and is keen to emphasise that, at the moment, it is only exploring how the configuration works. But it says the design has "great potential".

One day it could be scaled up to the size of a regular passenger jet.

In traditional aircraft the fuselage is basically dead weight and needs big wings to keep it in the sky.

Under a blended-wing design, the whole airframe provides lift, so it can be lighter and smaller than current designs, but can potentially carry the same payload.

Maveric is one of several initiatives from Airbus, and there are many by other aerospace firms, to meet an industry target to halve emissions from air travel by 2050, compared to 2005 levels.

"There is a really big challenge there. And there is a big expectation from society which we think it is our duty to find answers to," says Sandra Bour-Schaeffer, the chief executive of Airbus UpNext, which evaluates new technologies for the European aerospace giant.

"We believe that we have to go into a really… breakthrough technology," she says.

An equally radical idea is being explored at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Researchers there are working on a design known as the "Flying-V". It is a new concept for a long-haul aircraft, which they claim would be up to 20% more efficient than a state-of-the-art modern plane such as the Airbus A350.

Like Maveric, it abandons the idea of a conventional fuselage. But in this case the shape is more like an arrowhead, with two wings stretching out behind the cockpit in a V. Passengers and cargo would be carried within the wings themselves.

The designers think it would be cheaper to build than the blended wing because the two arms of the V could be "plugged" into the rest of the fuselage. So the aircraft could be built in parts, rather than all at once.

"We think we can keep the manufacturing costs relatively low, compared to concepts that would have more unique components," says Roelof Vos, the project lead for the Flying-V and an assistant professor at Delft University of Technology.

The design was originally the brainchild of a graduate student, and formed part of his thesis. It is being developed with support from the Dutch airline KLM and Airbus - and in July a scale model took to the skies for the first time, from an airbase in Germany.

The flight of the test aircraft - a battery-powered drone with a 9ft wingspan - was deemed a success.    

Researchers said the machine performed well, although it did suffer from a kind of aerodynamic wobbling, known as "Dutch roll". This made it difficult to keep the wings level, and resulted in what they described as "a somewhat rough landing" that damaged the front landing gear.

Data from those tests is currently being analysed and incorporated into a flight test simulator.

Airlines have seen their sales slump due to the pandemic, but despite that KLM says it will continue to support research into the Flying-V.

The attractions of more efficient aircraft are obvious, for an industry where cost control is vital to profitability, and which is under intense pressure to reduce its environmental impact.

But with the basic layout of commercial aircraft having gone unchanged for decades, there are other practical issues to consider - some of which avionics expert Steve Wright of the University of the West of England describes as "showstoppers".

• BBC