From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
In the future, you could find yourself booking an Emirates flight without a real window seat.
The
airline has just unveiled a new first class suite on board its latest
aircraft that features "virtual windows" instead of real ones.
The
President of Emirates, Tim Clarke, is hoping it will pave the way for
removing all windows from future planes, which he says will make them
lighter and faster.
"What we
may have [in the next 20 years] is aircraft that are, and I hate to say
this to a number of passengers, windowless," he told the BBC.
Here's how it would look and why the idea is being proposed.
So there's no windows on the outside …
But Mr Clarke says on the inside there will be "a full display of windows," which will beam in the images from the outside.
This
will be done using fibre-optic camera technology. So, instead of being
able to see directly outside, passengers will view images projected from
outside the aircraft — which is almost like the real thing.
In fact, according to Mr Clarke, the technology beaming the images is even better than seeing it "with the naked eye".
But why use virtual windows instead of the real thing?
In revealing the new design, even Mr Clarke recognised that windowless planes would not appeal to "a number of customers".
But he said there were a number of benefits to removing windows, a key one being that it would save 50 per cent of the weight of an aircraft, "simply
because in terms of build and structure and load [they] are quite a
problem and you have to reinforce a fuselage to be able to take them"....MORE
