Inside JetZero’s cavernous 275,000-square-foot hangar at Long Beach Airport in L.A. County, the future of flight takes an unexpected shape. I run my hand along the carbon fiber surface stitched with Kevlar that will form the aircraft’s frame, sit in a passenger cabin mockup built inside what would normally be the wing, and walk through a diagram-filled room where engineers are reimagining everything from baggage handling to boarding procedures. Unlike the cylindrical body of most planes, the blended wing design—where the wing and aircraft body are fused together—makes this aircraft look more like a stealth bomber or even a manta ray than a commercial airliner. But its most revolutionary feature isn’t its dramatic look. If JetZero succeeds, this flying wing will burn 50% less fuel than today’s jets, helping airlines slash their biggest cost. And it just so happens that cutting fuel burn also means cutting emissions.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“We’re solving the airlines’ number one and number two problems, which are like two sides of the coin: lower fuel burn, lower emissions,” Tom O’Leary, JetZero CEO told me from his desk at the company’s headquarters with the sound of airplanes taking off behind us. “Lower fuel burn is lower cost. Lower emissions is lower cost.”
It’s an important innovation at a critical moment. The aviation industry currently accounts for more than 2% of global emissions, a share that is expected to grow as an expanding middle class in emerging market countries increasingly looks to air travel to get around. With that in mind, policymakers and climate advocates have pushed the aviation industry to implement emissions-cutting solutions quickly. Some in the sector have proposed electric or even hydrogen airplanes as a long-term solution. Others say that sustainable aviation fuel, lower-emissions fuel that can be made from plants or recycled fuels, is a simpler answer. But both come with a substantial flaw: they either cost more or would require a costly new infrastructure ecosystem to get off the ground.
JetZero’s approach sidesteps these trade-offs, and its biggest sustainability selling point may be the direct link between emissions reduction and cost savings. It’s an important case study as policymakers waffle on climate policy in some places, and companies remain reluctant to invest too much in emissions reduction for the sake of emissions reductions. In 2025, even amid record global temperatures, the best case for climate solutions is often the business case. And there’s perhaps nothing more convincing than cutting costs.
But it won’t be easy. To get the plane to market, O’Leary and his team need to convince the aviation world that his company can overcome the technical complexity, regulatory uncertainty, and capital intensity that make it difficult to launch new aircraft.
The central idea for blended-wing aircraft is that fashioning a plane out of a single, wide, wing-like structure would reduce the area that touches external airflow, thereby reducing drag that holds a plane back. The wing shape of the aircraft body also helps generate lift. Taken together, in theory at least, this design means much greater fuel efficiency.
This design concept has been around for more than a century with advances coming in ebbs and flows, including programs involving everyone from NASA to Airbus. But commercialization never took off, in large part because of a conservative approach in the industry. For decades, manufacturers focused on improving existing aircraft offerings rather than trying something completely new that would take precious development dollars without any guarantee of commercial success.
In the vein of other revolutionary hard tech companies like SpaceX and Tesla, JetZero set out to disrupt old-school incumbents with a blend of lofty vision and aggressive development and manufacturing timeline. At the same time, the company has sought to use off-the-shelf parts wherever possible. This will allow it to conserve resources and minimize the time it will eventually take to certify the plane. “People didn’t take it seriously as a product,” says O’Leary of the past experiments with blended-wing aircraft. “At some point, things have to leave the science project phase… We’re making the hard decisions.”
The industry has noticed. Alaska Airlines and United are investors. Delta is a partner, consulting on how to put the aircraft into service. More broadly, airlines are watching closely because of the implications for their bottom line given that fuel represents about 30% of expenditures at U.S. airlines. Companies may also be attracted to efficiencies created by the new aircraft floorplan, which has shorter aisles, meaning faster boarding and easier maneuvering for flight attendants. On my tour of the company’s headquarters, I walked through a mockup of the aircraft’s cabin. Indeed, it looked spacious, though I would expect airlines will find ways to pack more people in.
In addition to the airline investments, JetZero has received federal funding and venture capital investment. But the majority of the roughly $300 million the company has raised thus far has come from the U.S. Air Force, which sees potential military applications after the aircraft is commercialized.
Despite the extremely high cost of bringing a new plane to market, O’Leary says that JetZero’s pathway to commercialization doesn’t require raising billions upon billions from venture funds. Instead, he says JetZero can solidify enough airline pre-orders to rely on bank financing. “We have all those elements that create the demand—tens of billions of dollars, and really, by the time we go into service, it will be hundreds of billions,” he says.
For those climate concerned, the pathway to commercialization may be less compelling than the raw emissions reduction numbers. But there’s a case to be made that its go-to-market momentum, combined with its ability to cut costs, is the plane’s most important climate-friendly feature.
Last year, revenue passenger kilometers, a measure that reflects the total distance of airline passengers, grew more than 10%, according to the International Air Transport Association. And airlines are buying up virtually any aircraft they can get their hands on in anticipation of long-term sustained growth. The sooner a more efficient plane can get to market, the lower emissions will be. The fuel savings mean that airlines will actually want to buy it.
This doesn’t solve the problem entirely, of course. For one, the timeline is always uncertain with a new technology, particularly in such a tightly regulated space. The company is evaluating potential sites for a manufacturing hub and says it will fly its demonstrator in 2027. But receiving federal approval and scaling up production will take time. Moreover, the JetZero plane covers just one niche—mid-size planes with around 250 passengers—in a much broader aviation market. Other variants could follow, but that would take even more time. And then there’s a vicious cycle that could emerge if JetZero does succeed in dramatically cutting costs. Lower costs would likely be passed to consumers, thus inducing even more demand for air travel.
It’s for all those reasons that JetZero, like even the best clean technologies, doesn’t represent a silver bullet. To actually decarbonize, the industry will need to figure out how to get a clean-burning fuel source to market at scale while also building out the necessary new infrastructure. But, there again, it helps if the planes are consuming half as much fuel.
This story is supported by a partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. TIME is solely responsible for the content.
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