Something known since the 1950s, yet hardly acknowledged, is that even though some airplanes fly at very low speeds efficiently, and others fly at very high speeds efficiently, all prior aircraft waste enormous amounts of energy to fly in the mid-subsonic speed range.

The present economics of on-demand regional aviation are abysmal from first concept to final flight. This controlling fact underlies all of the superficial reasons why people don’t have their own airplanes, and it traces to a singular physical issue.

The problem is the way that existing aircraft (don’t fully) deal with aerodynamic drag. Through its comprehensive, patented design, Synergy became the first aircraft to directly attack the hidden issues causing the problem, then simultaneously apply six of the most advanced drag reduction technologies to fix them.

One key is its distinctive “Double Boxtail™” wing-becomes-tail configuration. (Similar-looking but inferior “box wing” ideas have been rejected for decades because they’re unstable, structurally vulnerable, and create interference drag.

In contrast, Synergy’s DBT configuration provides rock-solid stability with greater strength and without interference drag. It achieves this stability and its naturally coordinated turn control by reducing the dominant cause of drag at lower speeds, higher weights, and higher altitudes, which is called “induced drag”.)

Unlike every boxwing design, the twin horizontal tails -above and behind each wingtip- aren’t ‘wings’ to make more lift. In fact, these moving ‘control surfaces’ actually create a downward force most of the time.

Putting the right amount of this downward force in the right place above the wingtip reacts against ‘induced drag’ so well that it actually reduces the total drag, much like a sailplane reduces its total drag by adding wingspan.  Some think of it like origami: folding up a long wing in 3-D space to help achieve stable, high-speed flight…while carrying a lot more useful load than a glider.

Our abundant flight surfaces increase safety. The DBT configuration allows safer low speed handling, lower landing speeds, and a demonstrated stall prevention and recovery technology aimed at stamping out the number one cause of small airplane accidents.

Synergy’s unique ‘tail on the wings configuration’ provides many amazing benefits related to stability and high “span efficiency,” leading to excellent low and high speed performance. Eliminating unnecessary length allows less-visible technologies for laminar flow, pressure thrust, and boundary layer control to provide yet higher speeds with economy.

These features in combination provide the 8x improvement required for Synergy to double the speed per HP of General Aviation.

Our turbocharged jet-fuel diesel engine, ballistic parachute, and next-generation, self-flying smartplane ™ electronics are other key technologies to help lower barriers to personally operating an airplane. Future versions accept many options for energy source and powerplant, because the fuselage is accommodating.

Synergy aerodynamics unlock the door to practical electric flight, and various electric versions are already worked up that can achieve more than 750 mile range on today’s battery technology, through speed as much as through endurance. Electric cars can’t do as well as airplanes in this regard due to low speed limits on the ground.

Whether jet fuel, hybrid, or electric, a roomy, affordable personal aircraft supplies a fundamental need: on-demand mobility for small groups, over regional distances. Most species on earth fly, for the simple reason that it is by far the most efficient way to travel. Synergy brings the right innovations to finally make direct, on-demand regional travel a financially sustainable reality for humans.

• Operational costs can be less than a nickel per passenger-mile. 
• Thanks to its tiny number of simple, modular parts, the design is able to scale into low cost mass production, and to adapt in its details to accommodate a multitude of priorities, such as different ways of loading and entering its spacious interior.
• Many additional designs are possible.

Increasing the average door-to-door speed by a factor of five at comparable energy usage increases our habitat (for a given time budget) 25-fold, taking pressure off of highways and cities while improving their character.

Synergy and its progeny are the future our great-grandparents built 20,000 rural airports for. Ironically, its capabilities reward their foresight with the most daunting business challenge their forgotten industry has seen in decades: a potentially extreme new market demand, yet near-zero institutional investment, existing-player awareness, or long-term industrial vision in the small aircraft sector. All of transportation put together makes up 1% of where investors put their capital. Negativity abounds.

Yet a billion cars prove the latent demand for ‘user-operated, unscheduled private transportation.’ In 2015, auto manufacturers produced an average of 246,000 vehicles PER DAY, more than 10,000 per hour! Today, a phenomenal aircraft success story might reach the stunning volume of… one overpriced, impractical vehicle per day. Meanwhile, orders for new airplanes typically backlog into the thousands before deliveries begin. Unlike waiting patiently for your Tesla while driving your Toyota, reasonable interim options for the future smartplane buyer don’t exist, so the customer is hungry and tired of waiting.

This half century wait for affordable personal flight to arrive calls for new manufacturing thinking when it does. Synergy’s deep investment in ultra-simplified modular design, low cost tooling, and revolutionary process times allow automotive economics for the first time.  Therefore we are developing brilliant, scalable methods for low cost mass production.  The demand we’ve created among an eager 3%, ‘the innovators’ who together with early adopters ‘move the mountain’ of new opportunity, easily makes the future case for massive societal investment in the overlooked opportunity of personal flight.

Positive regulatory progress is already happening swiftly in response to the safety and cost advantages of smart, semi-autonomous technologies for simplified operations in small aircraft. Whereas self driving cars are just emerging, self-flying airplanes have been a reality for decades. (There’s literally an app for that.)

Long before mass production can create any potential for significant numbers of people owning aircraft, new regulations and smartplane ™ operator requirements are already being considered that reflect an enlightened regulatory awareness of their potential for increased safety. What holds things up right now isn’t the technologies, nor even the rule book, but rather a lack of airplanes that can properly use them. As a modern, yet traditional airplane, Synergy fits into the existing regulatory context. When growth begins through investment, most of the regulatory work needed to begin using the latest technologies will already have been accomplished. These will gradually introduce lower and lower barriers to personally operating your own Synergy.

The vast empty skies will stay that way, too. Actually, “air traffic” is a bit of an oxymoron.  Our need for ATC and sprawling airports comes primarily from scheduling huge airliners into the same central location every few minutes. This concentration is artificial, as each passenger arrives from, or is headed to, a destination somewhere in the 32,000 square miles such airports funnel from. Most travelers actually spend 71% of their travel time on the ground. Synergy doesn’t waste that time, or need that costly infrastructure, or even pavement. Every tiny community already has suitable airfields nearby, ready and waiting for your direct, unscheduled, group departure.

Really, the potential for safe, roomy, fast, fundamentally efficient personal aircraft is far beyond typical estimates, in which the above has been far out of reach. With early adoption will come the realization that a mile of old highway…or the latest hyper loopy boondoggle…can only take you a mile in one dimension. In Synergy, a half mile of grass strip can take you to and from ANYWHERE.

To keep this innovation safely headed toward broad adoption, Synergy Aircraft founders adopted a comprehensive, far reaching plan. To help offset the technology risk, more than a thousand Team Synergy volunteers and financial supporters from around the world united to help John McGinnis and his small team build numerous prototype Double Boxtail™ aircraft… starting, naturally, in his father’s garage!

This intentionally ‘grassroots effort’ permitted thousands of engineering challenges to be met without the risks, distractions, or ‘shortcut-itis’ brought by premature business hoopla.  As garage-level R&D wraps up, we’ve started the transition into a high growth startup company, by completing our merger into DBT Aero, Inc.

It’s been more than a lifetime since aviation captured our collective attention. It will take a perceptive long-term effort, in well-managed phases, to deliver its true potential. Making it possible in this case is a product concept with the required demand and profitability to reward large scale investment at each level of adoption, and a tenacious, inspiring vision. We invite your interest with appreciation.