The San Diego start up is bringing back an old plane in a very modern way, showing that there’s never been a better time for bold ideas.
Siemens has sponsored this post.
It’s easy to forget that much of what we consume traveled the world to get to us. Coffee, electronics, clothes, cars, pharmaceuticals—all are intercontinental voyagers by way of either air or ocean. You may never know which of these routes your new beans/screens/jeans/machines/tetracyclines took, but for shippers, the difference between air and sea freight is stark. And frustrating.
It’s a classic trade-off. Shipping by sea is the most common method, and also the cheapest—but it’s slow. Shipping by air is 30 times faster, but costs 10 times as much or more. Shippers have two choices: save some money and suffer the transit time or rush it out and suffer the bottom line.
Where’s the middle ground? Natilus, a San Diego-based aerospace startup, is building it. And it’s about time.
“We were always struggling to figure out how to create the timeliness of air freight but at a cost point closer to ocean freight,” Aleksey Matyushev, CEO of Natilus, told engineering.com. A seasoned aerospace engineer, Matyushev co-founded the start up to finally put an end to that lingering problem.
The solution? A new type of aircraft that has more space, less emissions and the potential to revolutionize the $5 trillion global supply chain. Even more interesting, Natilus’ 21st-century approach to design points to a revolution brewing in the aerospace industry itself.
Bringing back the Blended Wing Body
Matyushev and his co-founder Anatoly Star had an “Aha!” moment that jumpstarted Natilus in 2016. It was a simple but vital realization: air freight is driven by volume, not weight. Think of the last Amazon box you received that was twice as big as the item inside and you can see the problem. Matyushev and Star observed that conventional airplanes—long tubes with two wings—run out of space long before they hit their weight limit.
“The industry was really looking for a more volume-centric design,” Matyushev says.
In fact, the industry had already explored just that design: the Blended Wing Body, or BWB. First proposed back in the 1920s, this type of aircraft combines the wings and body of an airplane into a single shape, resulting in a flatter, wider plane than the conventional tube and wings. This form has more space, cuts down on drag and has better fuel efficiency, but it has struggled to achieve widespread use. The first attempt at a BWB in 1924, the Westland Dreadnought, crashed on its first flight. The BWB did eventually succeed in a few military planes, such as the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in 1964, but most BWB airplanes to date have been experimental prototypes only.

One of the problems with BWB planes is that they’re an uncomfortable experience for passengers. Given the wideness of the body, those sitting on the outside of the cabin would feel the Gs of every bank. “It’s like riding a roller coaster,” Matyushev says.
But cargo doesn’t get nauseous, and that’s why Natilus thinks BWB is the answer to the air/sea freight conundrum. With more space and higher fuel efficiency, a blended wing body could ship more freight at a lower cost than conventional aircraft. It would still cost more than shipping by sea, but it would be 60 percent cheaper than air freight today, according to Natilus—finally marrying the best of both options: fast and cheap. Add on a 50 percent reduction in fuel emissions, and BWB air freight could completely change the dynamics of the global shipping industry.
Diamonds in the sky
Natilus is developing a family of three blended wing body aircraft, starting with the short-haul feeder Kona, a 19,000-pound plane which will offer a 3.8-ton payload. Matyushev says the Kona will be ready for its first flight in 24 months, and if all goes to plan, the plane will be delivered to customers as early as 2027.

Though the company’s efforts are mainly focused on Kona right now, Natilus is also designing Alisio, a Boeing 767 equivalent with a 60-ton payload, and Nordes, a transpacific behemoth with a 100-ton payload that Matyushev says has sparked the most customer excitement. Natilus reports more than 460 preorders across the three aircraft and more than $6.8 billion in order commitments from airlines and integrators.

The BWB shape isn’t the only interesting feature of Natilus’ aircraft family. To make loading and unloading freight easier, the company has applied for a patent on what it called its diamond configuration, a twisting of the cargo bay by up to 45 degrees. “That allows us to really get into the nooks and crannies of this whole triangular fuselage, allowing more efficiency and more volume to be embedded into it,” Matyushev says.

But perhaps most interesting of all is the fact Natilus’ aircraft will be completely unmanned—there won’t even be a cockpit in the final product. “The airplane flies itself,” says Matyushev.
For regulatory reasons, it’s a bit more complicated than that. The plane can fly autonomously thanks to Natilus’ proprietary autopilot software, which runs on FAA-certified hardware on top of an FAA-certified real-time operating system. But the FAA takes a crawl-walk-run approach to new technology, Matyushev says, and is only ready to walk on full autonomy. For now, Natilus’ aircraft will be supervised from afar by pilots who can remotely guide the aircraft through its flight and coordinate with air traffic control as needed.

An aviation renaissance
Aviation, Matyushev says, is an industry rooted in tradition. Paperwork—and lots of it—was a common sight at the companies he previously worked for. He wasn’t a fan, referring to it as “inefficient and a waste of everybody’s time.” Matyushev and his co-founder Star wanted to take a more digital approach with their company.
The company started out using SolidWorks, but as its plane design progressed and Natilus grew it migrated to the Siemens Xcelerator platform, including NX and Teamcenter. Matyushev praised these tools for their pricing (Siemens offers discounts to startups) as well as the platform’s breadth of capabilities, which include electrical design, finite element analysis and more. The platform also allowed Natilus to ditch the pesky paperwork.
“Moving into Teamcenter and having revision control already built into the software, moving away from forms being signed by engineers and moving around the office to automatic signoffs, is a really big deal,” Matyushev says.

It’s a step in the direction of digital transformation, and Matyushev is optimistic about the other possibilities to modernize the highly-regulated sector—particularly with automation and digital twins, technologies that he believes are still in the early stages but are ultimately the future of the industry. And it’s an industry that’s finally warming to change.
“If you asked me 10 years ago, I feel like we couldn’t have done anything new or innovative,” Matyushev says. “But the new thinking and methodology coming into this arena is very cool. It finally feels that there’s a renaissance in aerospace and aviation, and I’m really getting excited about that.”
To learn more about Siemens Xcelerator, visit Siemens.com.