Airbus reveals aircraft of the future

http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/seethrough-plane-airbus-reveals-aircraft-of-the-future-20110614-1g15w.html

by Paulosborne • 15 years ago

34 59 15 years ago

theage.com.au

mturmon• 15 years ago

This press release, rewritten as a news article, seems like it comes from a parallel universe in which carriers are not trying to drive costs to zero.

I especially liked the comment from the VP that part of their plans for making the plane environmentally sound starts with recyclable components. As if recycling the plane is a major design consideration.

pedalpete• 15 years ago

As a European company, I believe recycling has to be a major part of their development efforts.

They could easily be caught up in EU laws and regulations regarding recycling. Though the link below pertains to electronics, I believe there are similar laws for automobiles, so they could just be thinking ahead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Electrical_and_Electronic...

Further to that, recycling is good practice in something as resource intensive as an airplane. Recycling bits from lots of different phones is, I suspect, much more challenging than recycling large chunks from planes.

melvinram• 15 years ago

My favorite line: “Our research shows that passengers of 2050 will expect a seamless travel experience while also caring for the environment,” Charles Champion, Airbus Executive Vice President Engineering.

I wonder how they researched what passengers of 2050 expect. If they invented time traveling, they should demo that instead.

Besides the fact that it's going to be a "reality" in 2050 which means it has a high chance of never becoming a reality as discussed today, it's a pretty cool concept video. I'm that guy who loves staring out the window every 10-20 mins or so. I'd enjoy it if it was used in production today. Not sure what the state of the art will be in 40 years.

Terry_B• 15 years ago

They interviewed 6 year olds clearly.

I love these "visions" that constantly get thrown about with no discussion as to how or why the airlines would want this for their business.

r00fus• 15 years ago

Anyone see that and wonder how those long international flights that track the sun would allow passengers to sleep?

shriphani• 15 years ago

That would be the in-flight entertainment.

joahua• 15 years ago

I thought this - then remembered the A380's lighting systems that (in theory) help passengers get less jetlagged. Similar to F.lux [ http://stereopsis.com/flux/ ] for display color temperature, just on a bigger scale.

siculars• 15 years ago

I almost spit my drink out while watching the video. This has so much PR/Marketing written all over it it is hard to fathom anyone outside of those departments have even seen those "concepts". Almost like some intern fresh out of the European equivalent of RISD[0] sat down with some crayons and dreamt up something derived from Star Trek and Star Wars simultaneously. My favorite line:

"Gone are the regulated class divisions of First, Business and Economy, replaced by personalised zones that offer flexible, tailored levels of relaxation, interactivity and working spaces."

That, my friends, is probably the only thing that will happen by 2050. And the odds on that are slim to none.

[0]http://www.risd.edu/ (yes, go look at the image, 1/4, they have up right now.)

tyler_ball• 15 years ago

I hate this kind of 'design' and constantly wonder how these firms that make these kinds of conceptual, artists' renderings stay in business.

It's totally searching for solutions to problems that don't exist, and even worse, creating problems that don't exist now.

A transparent plane would be exciting for one flight, but think about what most people do on planes, especially those that fly often. They sleep, catch up on work, read, or watch the in-flight entertainment. These frequent flyers make up the majority of an airline's business and these designs would only complicate their lives.

If you asked any passenger what they would want to see improved, they would be things like "more space", "wi-fi", "better seats" and "lower cost". All of these designs probably act in opposition to these wishes.

Who want's virtual golf on a plane when that space could be used to widen the space between seating?

fungi2• 15 years ago

its PR, airbus relies on large cash injections from the EU. this is to make airbus look like a good corporate citizen and a good use of taxpayers money.

gaius• 15 years ago

No more than Boeing relies on the US taxpayer. Most likely this was just done because someone thought it would be cool.

code_duck2• 15 years ago

>think about what most people do on planes, especially those that fly often. They sleep, catch up on work, read, or watch the in-flight entertainment.

Those are the options currently available, so that makes sense. Personally I do look out the window a lot when I can, so giant windows would be nice.

I agree what they improved seems a bit... I don't know what. The video shows the futuristic shape-shifting chairs positioned in rows about eight feet away from each other. To heck with that, we'd be happy if they'd just give us enough room to back more than 30 degrees or straighten our legs. Seems like there will be an awful lot of in between points from here to this dream airplane... a realistic view of what planes could look like in say, 10 years would be more interesting.

ChuckMcM4• 15 years ago

I found it amusing. Perhaps the most amusing part was that they predict people will actually be flying airplanes from point A to point B in 2050.

If you have 3D holographic like pods, you could skype that and not go anywhere. So for business you need to travel, uh why? Can you slip into AndroBot's latest offering and attend a concert on the other side of the globe in 'person' where you have 'better than retina resolution' imagery and 'better than aural recognition' audio and no jet lag and no need to remember to bring your toothbrush?

No business travel btw means no airlines (well at least none of the current airlines). If you really physically had to move your actual self from say San Francisco to Tokyo wouldn't you just buy a space on a Virgin Galactic hopper, go sub-orbital and be there in 45 minutes? You'll be 'online' the entire trip so you don't need the transportation vendor to try to 'guess' what sort of thing you would find entertaining.

Pleasure zeppelins? Sure I could see those, lazily drifting across the recovered rain forests of south America, 'air cruising'.

But I think the days of 'airlines' carrying 'people' are numbered. Give everyone their own personal 100gbit Intenet connection to the world and travel loses a lot of its desirability.

Here's my prediction, in 2050 the only airplane you can fly in as a passenger will be a Boeing 747 that is being run and maintained by an enthusiast society which is preserving what it was like in the 'old' days. :-)

maigret• 15 years ago

Not sure. Electronic communication keeps increasing, apparently making travel always less needed, yet flight passenger numbers worldwide keep increasing.

Yes, the electronic experience will improve, but expect real world attractions that will also improve in intensity. Think Burj Khaliva or Spaceship 2.

ChuckMcM4• 15 years ago

"Not sure. Electronic communication keeps increasing, apparently making travel always less needed, yet flight passenger numbers worldwide keep increasing."

TL;DR version: When telepresence is good enough, the airline passenger business will become an unprofitable niche for specialty companies.

Well here is the reasoning I use, love to hear the counter argument.

The economics of the airline business are dominated by business travelers, they value time over money but there is a ceiling on how much money they will spend. [1]

The cost of air travel is going up for organic reasons (cost of fuel, airport taxes, maintenance burdens) in the presence of a constant pressure on their customers from the business space on margins. In the absence of legislation, the cost of maintaining airport infrastructure for a region is born by the set of people who use it.

The cost of network connectivity is going down, the ability to send more and more data over the existing infrastructure is going up, and the 'experience' of meeting online is going up as well.

I'm witness to the leading edge of the substitution where network connectivity is trumping travel. I get lots of vendors trying to sell me stuff and more and more of them want to 'skype in' and talk to me rather than come by the office.

If I project that out 40 years I imagine that 'network' experience should be equivalent to "being there", and the cost of flying will be unbearable because businesses which fly sales people around will be at a competitive disadvantage.

So the intersection of these trends for business that can be conducted this way will. I am further guessing that telepresence will nail a bunch of things which now cannot be done like this, namely factory inspection and site evaluations. I don't know if you're familiar with Trevor's vision here [2] but I can tell you that shipping a dexterous telepresence robot to China to check on quality control issues in the factory, especially if you can leave it there for multiple re-use, will be much more efficient than 'going' there.

So this combination will, I suspect, "force" businesses out of using airlines. For an airline to retain the business they would have to be 'better' somehow than telepresence. The metrics I can come up with for 'better' are its 'faster', 'cheaper', and 'easier to do often.'

From that, if a majority of the business users that currently use airlines to conduct business stop, then the airlines will lose the ability to charge them premium prices against their time specific needs. If you re-factor the airline business model to rely solely on tourist/casual travel you put them under severe price pressure (flying is a commodity, and even more so if the passengers are willing to schedule around the lowest possible price).

If we can agree that air travel prices will spiral upward due to the combination of higher costs and fewer premium paying passengers, other modes of travel which are currently uneconomical can become so. For example rail service between relatively close (less than 500 miles or 800 km) destinations can offer a superior experience because of reduced scheduling constraints and the ability to dynamically adapt to demand. (easy to add a car to a train, hard to add another 10 rows to an airplane).

Substitution would lead to fewer passengers which would lower aggregate passenger revenue, and since costs are fixed regardless of passenger occupancy, the tension between what you would have to charge to fly someone profitably and the ability to sell that many seats reliably, will (I predict) result in the collapse of what we're calling the 'airline' business in this discussion.

Some demand could be picked up by the now growing telepresence robot market (since it doesn't compete with airlines any more) and unlike the airline business the cost of telepresence robots goes down the more you build rather than up like it does for airlines.

"Yes, the electronic experience will improve, but expect real world attractions that will also improve in intensity. Think Burj Khaliva or Spaceship 2."

At the risk of invoking the simulation argument, if you cannot tell, other than perhaps by acceleration, that you aren't "there" how much more are you willing to pay to actually be there? I won't argue with Spaceship 2, as mention in the original post there will always be a need to get from point a to point b at any cost, which is something a slightly upgraded Spaceship 2 could do, but for the Burj Khaliva? If the difference in cost between having your telepresence robot walk around and check it out vs actually going there was one week of salary per person would you opt to go? how about two weeks salary? Economics tells us there will be some demand but there may not be enough to support a business. Here is a current (and local) example. Consider the basic ingredients for cooking food. (We're talking flour, sugar, spice, etc) These things have gone from having their own aisle in grocery markets to being practically 'specialty' items. People still eat, but economics of cooking your own food vs the convenience of pre-prepared food has reduced the demand for the basics. I doubt they will ever go away completely but the market becomes a specialty market supporting a very limited consumer base. Do I think there would be enough 'reality' tourists who are willing to pay extra to be there to support the infrastructure for flying people around from where they might be to where they might go? No. The cost of maintaining airports, schedules, planes, fuel, maintenance supplies, and crews across the entire country is fixed.

There exists a point where keeping the infrastructure around doesn't make sense for the use by potential customers. That is already true [3] in some small airports that are kept alive by federal subsidies and fees on airline passengers. As passenger levels decrease it will become harder and harder to maintain support for those. Once its cheaper to just build a train which will take you to the nearest city with an airport its game over for small town airports.

The technology for telepresence gets 'good enough' when the ever rising costs of air travel cross the threshold which makes the choice of flying untenable. From that point airline passenger travel decreases until all but specialty airlines have gone out of business. My guess is we'll see it happen before 2050 :-)

[1] http://www.whu.edu/cms/fileadmin/redaktion/LS-RegOek/Working...

[2] http://www.anybot.com/#front

[3] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1201266...

code_duck2• 15 years ago

Not so sure about that. Talking to my friend in London on video Skype does not at all make visiting her in person obsolete. What is this, Barbarella?

ChuckMcM4• 15 years ago

I agree it does not. The question is how often are you going to fly to London to visit them? Once a year? Twice? How often do you do that now? (and I guess more importantly do you live where you would have to fly, say in the USA)

We can make some educated guesses around what happens. The numbers are knowable for the purposes of these guesses we'll just use guesses. Feel free to change them to suit your needs, (a spreadsheet model would be even better).

So lets take the population of the San Francisco Bay area of 7M, 77% of whom are of age to decide to fly to London (18+) of which perhaps 3M have the economic means to decide to do so on an annual basis.

If we assume the non-business travelers will travel with the same frequency they do now (this is the 'hold this variable constant' approach), and we further assume that the amount of revenue that an airline has to make from the route over the course of a year is the same as it is now (we base this on airlines attempting and not always succeeding in maintaining profitable air routes between cities), and we assume that half the passengers are currently travelling for business reasons (this is a simple guess, if you are building a model you should try 25%, 50%, and 75% as guesses, we know it is more than 0% and less than 100%, looking at the whole range as a surface is also interesting).

If our assumptions (guesses) were true (and we have wiggle room there) The cost of airline tickets between SF and LHR would have to nearly double to maintain the same revenue as before. This is because the other costs of the plane don't change as much with half as many passengers, somewhat less fuel (lighter), same maintenance costs, same crew costs, slightly less food cost, same entertainment costs, cleaning costs, airport taxes, etc. This argument sums to the fixed costs overwhelm the variable costs of carrying passengers.

If we assert that business people pay more to fly than tourists do (I think this is a reasonable assertion given that tourists who have the option of booking weeks ahead and adjusting for various things like saturday overnights etc) if the half business people were paying 'full fare coach' their ticket prices are 3 times the price of the tourist tickets. In a worst case scenario that all the tourists got bargains and none of the business travelers do, the revenue is more severely affected by the loss of a business traveler than it is by simply the loss of one ticket sale.

In that scenario the business traveler pays 75% of the revenue and tourists 25% for the year, requiring the tourists to pay 4x what they currently pay to make up the same annual revenue.

Now the zinger, airlines state that they lower prices to attract more passengers. If we look at the converse of this that raising prices would cause more passengers to not travel, we have to verify its not a fallacy. Looking at the complaints the airlines made about the high cost of fuel affecting ticket prices and thus reducing air travel, I'm comfortable believing the claim that higher prices reduces travel.

If the cost of flying to London goes up by 3-4x to account for the revenue lost by the business travelers staying home, it would seem to reduce the total number of passengers still further. Economics suggest that both actors, the airlines and the passengers, will adjust their behaviors to achieve equilibrium.

If we're prognosticating forty years into the future, we ask "Does an equilibrium position exist for recreational air travel?"

To be clear, I don't know if it does. What I was saying is that I can imagine reasons which I consider to be highly probable as to why it wouldn't. Its harder for me to imagine spending a significant amount of my salary to 'casually' visit someone.

I'm very interested in alternate ideas about where air travel is going.

[1] http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/bayarea.htm

jasonkester• 15 years ago

Have you ever been to Point B? It's pretty awesome.

There's beaches there, and it's sunny and warm every single day. They have little thatched huts you can rent and a chilled bar with hammocks and cheap cold beers and a table full of Australian girls that seem to want to talk to you.

Point B also has world class snowboarding that blows the doors off that little mountain near your home town. And rock climbing and surfing and Mayan pyramids and the freaking Eiffel Tower.

I, for one, don't plan to quit going there at any point in the next 50 years.

ChuckMcM4• 15 years ago

If I ever decide to go into the pub business I think I'll name it 'Point B' :-)

puls• 15 years ago

This is the airplane of 40 years in the future?

Compare this to the past 40 years: in 1970, we had... the Boeing 737 and 747. They're still making them today.

Sure, there have been evolutionary enhancements. But that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence for future revolutions.

corin_• 15 years ago

Why should developments in any area ever move at the same speed all the time? Think how long people travelled on horses and carts, and then how (relatively) quickly cars appeared.

w1ntermute2• 15 years ago

> The aircraft's bone-like structure would allow for panoramic views.

Great, that's exactly what I need. People around me opening up their "skylight" while I'm trying to get some shut-eye. It's bad enough when someone opens the tiny windows we have right now. Makes it damn near impossible to sleep without an eye mask, which are really uncomfortable (for me).

There are exactly 7 things that I want from a "futuristic" airplane:

1) Make it so my ears don't pop.

2) Get rid of the ridiculously loud engine drone.

3) Make the seats/legroom bigger.

4) Increase the air humidity so my throat and eyes don't dry out.

5) Free internet and power outlet in coach.

6) Make it OK to use wireless & electronic devices during all times of the flight (even takeoff/landing).

7) Get rid of the damn windows, or at least make it possible for me to somehow block all light from entering my vicinity.

But I'm sure as hell not holding my breath for any of those things, because they're probably the last things on Airbus's mind.

vishaldpatel• 15 years ago

I think some of those concerns will be addressed by the 2050 model ;).

The "zones" could translate into a sky-light zone and a sleeper zone.

srini• 15 years ago

How can you list 7 things you want in a futuristic airplane and miss:

0) Get to my destination faster.

Where are all those hypersonic planes we were promised?

philwelch2• 15 years ago

I think the idea of supersonic, let alone hypersonic airliners went away when everyone realized the price of oil isn't going to go down anytime soon.

mjb• 15 years ago

> It's bad enough when someone opens the tiny windows we have right now.

I really like looking out of the plane, especially when flying over amazing places like the arctic tundra, the Sahara, chains of islands and the like. I feel that air travel, and the sense of wonder than many people still manage to feel from it, would be greatly diminished if there were no windows. Have you tried a quality third-party eye mask? I bought a good quality one, and find it much more comfortable than the free airline one.

Of course, I have never been able to fall asleep on an aeroplane (even on > 15 hour flights), so I don't have much sympathy for your plight.

> Increase the air humidity so my throat and eyes don't dry out. Boeing claim the 787 will be much more comfortable because of raised humidity.

> Get rid of the ridiculously loud engine drone. Have you been on an A380? Amazingly quiet, especially compared to old MD80-era planes.

> Free internet and power outlet in coach. This would be excellent, except for the very important guy having a very important business conversation (with his mom) in a loud voice to try impress the ladies.

> Make the seats/legroom bigger. Not really legroom, but people over 6'4" can actually stand up in the washrooms on the A380 (unlike the 777). I hate going 12 hours without being able to stand up.

rflrob• 15 years ago

>6) Make it OK to use wireless & electronic devices during all times of the flight (even takeoff/landing).

some electronics that transmit I can understand why they don't want them in use during the two most dangerous portions of the flight (straight and level is easy, with generally pretty wide error margins; interacting withnhe ground is considerably harder). Is there any way to certify electronics as safe to use in those situations, though? I can't imagine an eInk reader (for instance) is going to affect avionics any more than, say, cosmic rays.

nodata• 15 years ago

Why don't you wear a sleeping mask to cover your eyes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sleep_mask.jpg

arethuza• 15 years ago

"2) Get rid of the ridiculously loud engine drone."

Wear active sound cancelling headphones - I find they work really well for cutting out engine noise.

StavrosK7• 15 years ago

> 1) Make it so my ears don't pop.

Learn to open your eustachian tube or yawn on demand at that problem goes away! Unfortunately, I'm not sure this can be taught.

riffraff• 15 years ago

swallowing usually helps too

keyle• 15 years ago

Yes but no... If you have a bad condition like me you can do everything yet it will hurt like hell...

Two things work. Nose spray (unblocks nose and the whole canals). And sinutab an hour before landing...

I'm no reseller of those I'm just sharing for the ones who've been in horrendous pain like me...

dageshi• 15 years ago

Perhaps we need two types of airliners one for the old and whiney, kind of like a retirement home in the sky... and the other for people with a sense of wanderlust...

cafard• 15 years ago

The irritations of travel can affect even the young, I've found, though when young I encountered a lot of them on Greyhound buses. And in middle age I find the airliners a lot more pleasant than the airports.

ewald• 15 years ago

Maybe I'm weird, but I would hate if the engines weren't loud.

I find the sound soothing, and the white noise is way better than listening to unpolite people talking loudly or babies crying.

It would be impossible for me to sleep on a plane.

kahawe• 15 years ago

Ahhh, see-through aluminum now where could they have possible come up with that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_materials#Met...

And clearly, staring right into the blaring sun at around 9k ft up in the air is going to make for an even greater and more satisfying travel experience!

You know what a truly wonderful vision for 2050 would be? Travel without having to deal with the airlines and without being locked in a crampy seat the size of sardine can and without having to wait through endless and pointless lines of "security checks". I hate those security checks... if only someone would come up with truly smart and efficient security procedures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Gurion_International_Airpor...

StavrosK7• 15 years ago

I thought of a portal system, similar to what's used in the game, only you'd have a door frame installed in your house with a dial pad next to it. You'd dial the person whose door you wanted to connect to, they'd authorize it (perhaps after a small conversation) and the two door frames would create a portal to each other's room, as if the rooms were connected.

This is nothing more than an interesting thought experiment, but I figured that it would already make all forms of transformation obsolete, except perhaps for ones used for leisure. Everything would be much cheaper, as you could basically just carry everything from production to distribution to people's homes within a few seconds.

It would also probably make most forms of communication obsolete, as you could just walk into the next room and see your friends, and you could go out in any place in the world, so it would also revolutionize travel.

Physical shops would be turned into their online equivalents, as locality would no longer play any part in anything, but they would only exist for the pleasure (and marketing) of physically shopping. Actually, I can't decide whether online stores would perish instead...

Anyway, it's an interesting world to contemplate.

rmccue• 15 years ago

Turns out transparent aluminium does actually exist: http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/News/151361,transparent-aluminiu...

Though I doubt they'll be making planes out of something explosive.

cycojesus• 15 years ago

Wow, so much negativity in the comments! Who spat in your kool-aid today?...

Where's your innovating spirit, people?

Yes it's a PR thing, yes it's very likely off by more than a thin margin, yes it's prospective because, guess what, 2050 is in the future. That doesn't mean it's not interesting.

Just because it isn't a teenager in his californian basement "inventing" new ways to ruin my twitter stream with childish gamification scheme doesn't make it evil.

ysangkok• 15 years ago

Maybe because people expect better from an aircraft maker. You'd think they'd have some kind of realistic view on matters, but it looks like they hired a sci-fi author to do their PR.

archangel_one• 15 years ago

Yeah right. They had all manner of conceptual drawings for the A380 as well with suspiciously spacious looking interiors as well. What we're actually going to get from an aircraft of the future is something with more, smaller seats.

pinaceae• 15 years ago

Things that I'd like to be solved:

1., Optimize the time spent checking in and out. So much time is wasted on the ground, especially on shorter trips it sometimes feels longer than the actual trip (luggage, security, etc.)

2., Flying long-haul in economy class just plainly sucks. Sitting all the time, for 12 hours, is hell. Having no Wi-Fi, no power outlet and sometimes no room to unfold a notebook (if the guy in front reclines his seat) is just bad. Different seating arrangements are being tried out in business class (diagonal, etc), but there is no innovation in coach. People bring these u-shaped neck pillows to alleviate some of the pain, why is seat design so bad?

3., Personalized transfer info while in flight. Why do I need to check after landing if my gate has been changed? Better airlines display the info on monitors, but it still isn't convenient. Transfer in bigger airports like Frankfurt can lead to very long running exercises.

4., Turbulence. THE reason why ideas like bars, social areas will never work. If you're not tied down, you might get seriously hurt. Plus, on trans-atlantic flights your are forbidden to stand around in groups because of terror fears. Flight = seat.

meric• 15 years ago

I had not really paid attention to it before, but this plane had no windows. Instead, the walls, ceiling and floor had turned completely transparent. Or so it seemed. I reached down and touched the floor and apparently it was some kind of screen. The entire interior of the plane was covered with this screen material, and it was displaying a view that made the plane appear transparent. Overhead there was a brilliant blue sky with a few puffy clouds. Beside us in the distance were other planes. Below was a remarkable city and we were flying right over it.

http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna.htm, Chapter 6

Airbus reveals aircraft of the future

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