Dutch airline KLM on Monday revealed it is cooperating with Delft University of Technology to develop a lightweight, fuel-efficient V-shaped aircraft that seats passengers in the wings.

KLM said it would disclose a scale model and full-size section of the "Flying-V" interior at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in October.

“This airplane is a lot more efficient because you create a synergy of the fuselage and the wing,” said Justus Benad who devised the concept in 2015 when he was a university student in Berlin and an intern at Airbus.

“It’s difficult to go electric with long-range aircraft because then these aircraft get really heavy,” he noted.

“This is why over the next years, we do not expect to have significant gains there when you want to fly over the Atlantic, for example,” he added.

Benad stressed the need for more research on the design, saying engineers would need to evaluate how the airplane would perform during takeoff and landing and at slow speeds.