“On an abandoned Air Force field near Lubbock peppered with prairie-dog holes, the startup Aerolane is testing a business plan to pull cargo gliders with small freighter planes. The concept from former executives at Amazon.com Inc. and BNSF Railway Co. is that carriers could double capacity by towing a second engineless aircraft.

The potential savings — as much as 65% less fuel burn when the gliders are purpose-built for aerodynamics — are huge for a $135 billion air-freight industry that doesn’t blink at investing in new aircraft engines to reduce fuel use by 15% and that quickly adopted winglets to boost efficiency just 5%.”

From Bloomberg.