Would you dare to fly on this?????

This week I flew to Birmingham for work reasons. Late November is a nice time to fly and people watch at airports as the festive season has started so everything is looking twinkly and bright but you don’t have the bonkers numbers of people travelling so you get a pinch of the holiday season minus mad stress.

I flew with Flybe on one of their Dash aircraft, which if you are used to flying on bigger aircraft, can sometimes feel a bit bumpy and very noisy. Just before I was getting on my flight home I was sitting at the gate and aimlessly flicking through Facebook. I came across an article on CBS New York about the future of the aviation world and how Emirates are taking interactive innovation to new levels. Their article featured an interview with Zach Honig from Thepointsguy.com and his recent journey on a first class suite in the centre of the plane that had virtual reality windows – which to be honest screams of familiarity to the Virtual Balcony cabins Royal Caribbean have introduced on some of their more recent ships and dry dock visits.

What Emirates have done is to take a similar idea and run with it – for maybe more cost saving reasons.

“We’ve demonstrated that with fiber optic cameras relaying the image from the outside, as if you were in the window, the quality of the imagery is so good, it’s better than with the natural eye,” Tim Clark, the president of Emirates Airline, said to Hilary Lane of CBS.

Clark said the technology opens up the possibility of building airplanes with no windows in the cabin at all.

“The aircraft are lighter. The aircraft could fly faster. They’ll burn far less fuel and fly higher,”

Digital monitors on an Emirates airliner. (Credit: CBS)

I think one of the main reasons, aside of the initial jump in sales they would have as people would be scrambling to fly on one of these aircrafts, is they are bound to be cheaper to make if they dont have to worry about adding in windows and sealing them etc. Also they are bound to be more aerodynamic with the sleaker, smoother fuselage and as a by product be cheaper to run fuel wise.

Concept art of a windowless plane. (Credit: CBS)

To be perfectly honest I don’t know if this is an aircraft that I would necessarily like to fly on. At the beginning they are also bound to be way higher cost wise than traditional aircraft – as all new and sparkly things are – and I can see the appeal but the little bit of sky I see outside of the ‘normal’ window is way more than enough for me. I dont really want to be thinking that the windows will be 44 inch flat screen TV size, or god forbid the whole size of the inside of the plane – eeeekkkkkk, definitely not my thing.

What’s your thoughts on it? Is this something that would make you choose Emirates or any other airline who has aircraft like this over the traditional type of planes?

I would love to know what you think.