Patent attributes
An aircraft includes a fuselage and a wing assembly that is rotatable between a substantially perpendicular orientation relative to the fuselage in flight modes and a substantially parallel orientation relative to the fuselage in a wing stowage mode. The wing assembly includes a wing that is pivotable between forward flight and VTOL orientations by a pivot angle. A distributed thrust array is coupled to the wing that includes outboard and inboard propulsion assemblies, each propulsion assembly having an axis of rotation that has a fixed angle relative to a chord axis of the wing. In a VTOL flight mode, the axis of rotation of each propulsion assembly is substantially vertical and the wing is in the VTOL orientation. In a forward flight mode, the wing is in the forward flight orientation and the axis of rotation of each propulsion assembly is tilted forward from the vertical by the pivot angle.