The airplane of the future is lightweight, green and windowless, and it could very well be here in the next decade. That is what a United Kingdom-based technology innovation company says.
The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) is working on the first aircraft that will do away entirely with the windows. Instead of the oversized peepholes that add weight to the plane's fuselage, CPI plans to install lightweight, flexible OLED (organic light emitting diode) screens that will provide passengers a high-definition picture of what's going on outside taken by cameras mounted on the outside or any other view they wish to see, such as the Aurora Borealis or the New York City skyline.
This concept is not new. In fact, Technicon Design, a Paris-based design company has won an award for its IXION Windowless Jet Concept, which gives passengers a 360-degree view of the outside of the plane gathered from cameras mounted on the aircraft's exterior. But CPI is the first company to acknowledge that the windowless airplanes could arrive as soon as 10 years from now.
The company is currently using £35 million worth of equipment in a facility in Sedgefield, County Durham to develop flexible, OLED screens that can be mounted on the sides of the fuselage. The technology is not impossible. In fact, electronics company LG has already developed its own curved screen OLED TVs that can bend without contorting the images displayed on the screen.
"You could have a display next to a seat if you wanted it; you could have a blank area next to a seat if you wanted it; you would have complete flexibility as to where you put [the panel screens]," says Dr. Jon Helliwell of CPI. "You could put screens on the back of the seats in the middle and link them to the same cameras."
CPI's windowless airplanes are more than a marketing ploy. Dr. Helliwell says the company's upcoming planes are the result of the aviation industry's ongoing quest to reduce weight, save on fuel consumption and ultimately lower airfares. Every year, 3.1 billion people fly to various destinations around the world, using up 220,000 tons of gallons of fuel and generating 705 million tons of carbon emissions, says CPI. By removing the windows, which add weight to the plane because windows require a reinforced fuselage, airlines could save 0.75 percent for every 1 percent of weight reduced.
"We had been speaking to people in aerospace and we understood that there was this need to take weight out of aircraft," Dr. Helliwell says.
As soon as the "building blocks" in building flexible OLED panels for the fuselage are complete, Dr. Helliwell says windowless planes could soon become a reality.
"We are talking about it now because it matches the kind of development timelines that they have in the aerospace industry," he says.
