Too many engines. The maintenance costs due to the complexity would be too much. Reduce the design to three larger fanjets would be necessary to get modern airlines to buy the design. Also, the fuselage is too small, given the engine power. Having much more power than is on current designs makes no sense as little increase in speed is possible without going supersonic, which is only allowed over the open ocean. Make it a two level, single class people-mover. Finally, the V-tail would be a tough sell to the FAA and other similar agencies.

Jeez, of all the unrealistic spacecraft aircraft designs floating around this gallery...only mine gets this picked apart. I've seen more than my fare share of planes that look like boxes and pottery in this gallery with nothing but praise. It should be noted that I never said I was an aircraft designer or that this is a real design. Some points to be made are these...the Vickers VC-10 flew with the engine layout shown here except for having no tail engine. How do you know how powerful the engines are if I didn't specify the thrust? You don't even know what use I ultimately had for this design or if I would use it at all! It's true modern jetliners have settled on three engine designs. But this is as much because aerospace companies have merged over the past 20 years and they want to standardize aircraft designs. The 707, DC-8, Convair 880 and 990 series, 747 all had four engines. The B-52 bomber had 8 engines, the B-47 had 6. If ever there was a place to be concerned about maintenance costs, it would be the military. Aviation design is about tradeoffs. Sometimes a larger number of engines may offset some other design limitation. Commercial jet aircraft are not sold to the FAA. They have to be sold to the customers who buy them. The FAA only regulates the industry and aircraft. They don't tell a corporation how to design it's aircraft. The designers make sure the design meets certain FAA specifications. The Beechcraft Bonanza is one of the most recognizable V-tail designs in the world and obviously its V-tail complied with FAA regs.