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Although Boeing may someday introduce a commercial airliner designated with the number 797, and although the company's Phantom Works (advanced research and development) unit may have researched the potential of blended-wing-body (BWB) aircraft design for military applications, Boeing is not currently developing a blended-wing aircraft for commercial use, nor does the image displayed below represent any aircraft (or prototype thereof) designed or produced by that company: This image is a conceptual picture from a Popular Science article about the future of aviation (one which proved so popular that it was made available for purchase in poster form) and has been circulated since at least early 1996 in fictitious articles proclaiming it to be Boeing's response to competition from the Airbus A380 in the commercial airliner business. A Boeing company blog produced by Randy Baseler, former vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, tackled this subject back in November 2006: In 2017, Boeing released a teaser image at the Paris Air Show hyping a medium-range, middle-market airplane under development that industry observers unofficially christened Boeing 797, but that was neither the real name of the aircraft nor did the visualization include a blended-wing design.
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