More turbulence, standing cabins and no passports – 18 ways the future will change flying

The environmental cost of flying is a significant hurdle for supersonic flight
Could we see fewer contrails in the sky thanks to biofuels? Credit: Getty

We are in the midst of an air travel revolution. Between ultra long-haul flights and biometric boarding, the way we fly is changing at a faster pace than ever before. That’s now, but what about in five, 10 or 20 years? We take a look.

Within five years...

The end of passports

Not so much five years as three. Aviation technology experts Sita says eight out of 10 airports are planning to install major biometric ID management programs that will allow passengers to board planes using only their face as proof of identity by 2021. Seven out of 10 airlines are also investing in biometric research and development.

The technology is already being trialled at London Heathrow, Los Angeles International and Orlando, to name just three, with the aim being to do away with the need for passports and boarding passes and allow airlines to turn planes round for departure in record times.

British Airways will use the technology at its new £52million terminal at New York’s JFK airport, while EasyJet has been trialling it at Gatwick. As dozens of tests take place around the world, it is only a matter of time before your face is your passport.

Biometric boarding is coming to an airport near you
Biometric boarding is coming to an airport near you Credit: 2018 MCT/Orlando Sentinel

In-flight gyms and nurseries

Australian airline Qantas is one of the airlines pushing manufacturers Boeing and Airbus to deliver on the next generation of flight, with its Project Sunrise seeking aircraft that can fly anywhere in the world non-stop. One of the elements of that thinking is how to keep passengers in the air for, say, 21 hours comfortable?

“We’re challenging ourselves to think outside the box,” said chief executive Alan Joyce. “Would you have the space [in aircraft] used for other activities - exercise, bar, creche, sleeping areas and berths? Boeing and Airbus have been actually quite creative in coming up with ideas.”

Airbus had its Silicon Valley outpost, A3, consider how reconfigurable cabin modules could be used to change quickly what a plane can offer its passengers, with gym or creche modules swapped in or out of a plane depending on customer needs. For example, if a plane landed after a short-haul flight, its cabin full of seats could then be in part of fully swapped out for one with bunks, gym or a breakout bar space ahead of a long-haul flight.

Bigger, fancier windows

You might not have noticed but plane windows are getting bigger - and more advanced. It was the cabin portholes on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that first caused a stir, with dimming technology that allows the digital shades to be drawn with the push of a button.

The largest windows in the business (65 per cent bigger than an average plane window) have electrified gel sandwiched between two thin pieces of glass that lets passengers control the amount of light that comes through without shutting out the view altogether.

Not to be outdone by its rivals, Airbus followed suit, making the windows on its latest A350 wider (rather than taller), but not dimmable, though it has said it is a technology that may yet be offered.

Of course, the largest window is the Skyview Panoramic, weighing in at a whopping 4.5 feet by 1.5 feet. Developed for Boeing by aerospace firm Fokker Technologies, the pane will only feature on the manufacturer’s business jet series, the BBJ, BBJ2 and BBJ Max.

Now that's a window
Now that's a window Credit: Skyview

Airlines could pay you to fly

Airlines struggling to balance the books while wrestling with how much they should charge for baggage, priority check in and other such extras might soon stop charging passengers and instead pay them to come on board.

The idea was mooted by Icelandic low-cost carrier Wow and is based on the premise that airline revenue from additional services, like car hire and hotels, could eventually become more valuable than the fare an airline charges for seats. Passengers who are likely to share their experiences of an airline on social media could be the first to benefit.

Wow’s founder Skuli Mogensen told Telegraph Travel that it was looking at rewarding customers who it has built up a "special relationship" with and who want to make the airline an "integral" part of their travel plans.

Wow was earlier this month bought out by its national rival Icelandair, which might scupper the above plans somewhat, but there’s no denying the challenge to airlines in how they handle ancillary pricing.

The end to low-cost, long-haul flying?

The revolution of cheap flights that straddle continents has made for a fascinating spectacle in recent years, but there are questions around its sustainability.

For one, as mentioned above, Wow Air, one of those that led the charge with £99 fares across the Atlantic, has struggled financially in the last year or so and was subsequently purchased by Icelandair. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the low-cost, long-haul model.

“It simply costs more than $99 to fly between continents and Wow has not found ways around it,” said Kristjan Sigurjonsson, editor of Icelandic news website Turisti.

Primera, another budget operator that flew to the US, went bust in October, further highlighting the challenge of making a success out of this model.

Even Norwegian, the frontrunner (set to be the only runner) on the scene, is having a tough time of it after investing so heavily in new aircraft. It was mooted in the summer that IAG, the group that owns British Airways, might launch a takeover bid for the carrier, putting paid to one of its rivals and likely curtailing the trend in falling far-flung fares.

More non-stop flights Down Under

The launch of the first scheduled non-stop service from London to Perth has been deemed a success, with Qantas revealing that ticket sales were exceeding expectations, and already setting its sights on direct flights between the UK and Sydney, on Australia’s east coast. The airline even went as far as to say that the service could launch by 2022.

Under the umbrella title of Project Sunrise, Qantas is in discussions with both Airbus and Boeing to produce a plane that could fly anywhere in the world, spending as long as 21 hours in the air, and still be financially viable.

“This is a last frontier in global aviation,” said CEO Alan Joyce,“The biggest challenge is not just to fly the distance. We have aircraft that can do that already. The challenge is flying the distance with a full load of passengers, their luggage, as well as freight.”

The Airbus A350 - which this year broke the record for the world’s longest flight with the Singapore Airlines service between Singapore and New York - is up against the Boeing 777x for the job. But no matter the winner, it’s clear that the age of ultra long-haul is upon us.

Virgin Galactic is one of the riders in the race to space
Virgin Galactic is one of the riders in the race to space Credit: virgin galactic

The race to space

Nasa this week mulled joining Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) and Elon Musk (SpaceX) in the battle to begin sending tourists into space for vast sums of cash.

How close are we? Who knows. There’s been an awful lot of hot air surrounding inaugural flights with numerous launch dates mooted and then delayed.

Space X in September revealed that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa would be one of its first passengers to visit the moon “as early as 2023”.

In May, Richard Branson said Virgin Galactic was “two or three more flights” away from getting to space. He said that he would be one of the first to take the trip, before opening the voyages up to paying customers.

Targeted audio torches

Imagine a spotlight shone into a dark room, illuminating only a targeted circle and nothing more. Now swap light for sound. Introducing Holosonics.

The brainchild of Dr Joseph Pompei, who at 16 became the youngest ever Bose sound engineer, Holosonics has developed an Audio Spotlight that uses directional loudspeaker technology to allow only the intended recipient to hear sounds that others nearby will not.

This can be applied in airports in a variety of ways, from entertaining children to advertising displays. But the best use is surely targeted announcements for passengers. Imagine sipping a coffee while perusing the paper, only to hear from above, “Excuse me, Mr Morris, you are going to be late for your flight. Please follow my voice to your gate.”

A baggage revolution

One of the innovations intended to decrease the number of “mishandled bags” - 5.57 for every 1,000 passengers were mishandled in 2017 - is real-time bag tracking linked to passengers’ phones.

From June of this year, Iata, which governs the world’s airlines, said that all carriers should track each bag and share that information with all those involved in ensuring its safe delivery to its destination.

Subsequently, seven out of 10 airlines intend to be able to share the location of a bag with its owner, too, by 2020.

This way, a traveller would be able to see if their bag had been loaded onto the plane before take-off, and alert a member of staff if not.

Another innovation in the field of baggage handling could see more and more passengers kissing goodbye to their luggage at home and not enjoying a reunion until their final destination. A door-to-cabin luggage transport service, AirPortr (airportr.com), which began life with British Airways at Heathrow in 2017, is expanding after this year closing deals with Easyjet, American Airlines and Finnair.

It allows travellers to check in their luggage from any London address straight onto their flight, leaving them able to head straight through the airport, luggage free, until they collect their bags at their destination airport.

A new kind of airport

The experience of waiting in an airport can be hellish. Yet, slowly, improvements are being made. Singapore’s Changi airport - with its own patch of rainforest - is a shining beacon for what could be achieved. In 2019, the airport’s $1.7 billion (£1.3bn) Jewel extension at Terminal 1 is expected to wow fliers with a five-story garden of forests, an indoor waterfall, hotel and hundreds of restaurants and shops inside a huge glass dome.

Hard to compete with Changi
Hard to compete with Changi

Airport developers are increasingly concerning themselves with how they can improve the reputation of their terminals. One of the advances could be the creation of a “digital twin” airport, when as much data as possible is used to ease passengers’ journey to their flight, from boarding queues to restaurant waits.

Broadly speaking, it means collating all available data into a digital representation of an airport and all its processes, so that real-time information can be fed back to passengers to manage their experience.

For example, someone rushing to their gate could ask whether they have enough time to grab a coffee from a cafe, and the digital twin would know where that passenger is, the status of his or her flight, queues at the cafe and even order a coffee for them.

Within 10 years…

Door-to-door plane pods

Dubai is testing Next Future Transportation’s autonomous pod vehicles, which promise a door to (plane) door experience. The Silicon Valley company wants to do away with airport terminals altogether, with its modular self-driving vehicles picking up passengers from their homes before coming together to form a sort-of bendy bus conga line that delivers travellers to the steps of the plane, checked in and ready to fly.

The idea of pods that can easily be coupled and detached (even in motion) is that different cars could be used for boarding processes, bag drop, or duty-free shopping, allowing guests the ability to move around and take care of all their airport business on the move.

The UAE city, that has one of the busiest airports in the world, is trialling the technology as part of its drive to make 25 per cent of its public transport autonomous by 2030.

All aboard the Skyrider 2.0
All aboard the Skyrider 2.0 Credit: skyrider

Standing-room only

The idea of squeezing more passengers onto flights - and reducing fares - by letting people stand just will not go away, which leads one to believe it might eventually happen.

Vertical seating – or “bar stools with seat belts”, as Ryanair dubbed them – was originally touted by Airbus in 2003. The idea was then developed by Italian firm Aviointeriors, which in April released its second incarnation of the Skyrider.

Skyrider 2.0 has more cushioning than its predecessor, weighs 50 per cent less than standard plane seats and allows 20 per cent more people into the cabin.

Designed only for short flights, the Skyrider 2.0 allows “ultra high-density in the aircraft cabin”, its designers said, delivering a seat pitch (the distance between one seat and the next) of just 23 inches (Ryanair’s standard is 30 inches).

Going supersonic

Much like the space race, a number of players are involved in reviving supersonic flight (Concorde did it first).

This week Lockheed Martin began production on its X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology aircraft, backed by Nasa, and hoping to be in the air for test flights by 2021. It will cruise at 55,000 feet at a speed of 940mph.  

Also in the running is the Richard Branson-backed start-up Boom. In July Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, said his company was aiming to make supersonic air travel - the type of which could see passenger reach New York from London in three hours - financially viable for all. He forsess an era where a 2,000 strong fleet of supersonic jets is serving hundreds of destinations around the world in only a matter of hours.

The Denver-based operation has developed prototypes of a 55-seater jet that will have a cruising speed of 1,451mph, 100mph faster than the Concorde, and hopes to begin passenger flights by 2025. Virgin Atlantic, Japan Airlines and two as-yet unnamed carriers have already expressed interest in acquiring Boom’s first planes.

Also in the running are Spike Aerospace, Airbus working with Aerion Corporation and Boeing, which has developed a “hypersonic” aircraft that could cross the Atlantic in an hour.

Virgin Atlantic flew a 747 to Orlando using part biofuel
Virgin Atlantic flew a 747 to Orlando using part biofuel Credit: AFP/BEN STANSALL

Flying on mustard seeds

Every year the aviation industry comes under a little more scrutiny for how it affects the environmental health of the planet. This year has seen a breakthrough in how airlines can use biofuels to reduce the pollution from its aircraft, mitigating its thousands of miles of travel.

Biofuels - made from industrial waste gasses - mixed with aviation kerosene contain less of the harmful sooty particles that form part of the contrails that streak across the sky which in turn form cirrus clouds.

"We know these contrails and cirrus clouds have a warming effect on the Earth's climate, and it's currently thought the warming effect associated with those clouds is more significant than all of the carbon dioxide emitted by aviation since the first powered flights began," Richard Moore from Nasa's Langley Research Center, said.

Qantas, Virgin Atlantic and SpiceJet are just three airlines ot have flown planes using biofuel this year. Qantas flew the world’s first such flight in January when 10 per cent of the fuel needed for a flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne was derived from mustard seeds, reducing carbon emissions by 7 per cent.

Within 20 years...

The end of security checks

Technology is being sought that can be used to monitor passengers as they move around an airport. Constant screening is expected to take the stress out of queuing up to be assessed by security guards. The goal will be to deploy “a security infrastructure that’s constantly screening people from the door to the gate, and not having this toll-booth mentality,” according to Seth Young, director of the Center for Aviation Studies at Ohio State University, in a report for Skift.

In the not-so-far future, passengers might be saved from having to remove their liquids from their hand luggage for checking, with the introduction of new CT scanners.

More flight delays

The fliers of the future will have to contend with more delays, we have been warned. As the skies get more crowded, delays at UK airports will be '44 times worse by 2030', according to figures from National Air Traffic Services (Nats). The air traffic control provider says that a radical shake-up of the country’s airspace is needed to cope with the increase in air traffic.

In 2016, Nats said that the number of delay minutes at UK airports could rise from 90,000 a year to four million by 2030.

This video below captures a day in the life of the UK airspace.

More turbulence

It’s bad news for nervous flyers. Incidents of severe air turbulence are likely to get worse as climate change takes hold, scientists claim. A recent study found that the jet stream winds along the flight route between London and New York are getting stronger because of climate change and are 15 per cent stronger in winter. This increase in the jet stream winds is expected to create more turbulence.

Another study last year concluded that instances of turbulence will rise three-fold by 2050, with transatlantic services feeling the brunt of it.

Clear-air turbulence (or Cat) is the most troublesome faced by airlines as it is invisible and cannot be detected on radar. However, Boeing is said to be testing a new laser system that can give pilots 60 seconds notice before severe turbulence.

Within 50 years...

Pilotless planes

One of the greatest changes on the horizon in the next decades will be reducing the number of pilots in the cockpit from two (or more) to one. Airlines are currently required by law to have at least two crew in the flight deck, but groups such as Nasa are looking into whether it could be possible to reduce numbers in the cockpit.

Perhaps the largest obstacle to commercial flights having just one pilot would be public opinion. It is not unheard of for one of the flight crew to fall ill during a flight and if anything were to happen to a plane with just one person on-board who knew how to fly, it is unlikely widespread change would happen in the industry no matter the technology.

That said, experts predict pilotless planes could be on the cards later in the century.

According to a study by investment bank UBS, pilotless passenger aircraft could save the industry - and passengers - £27billion a year.

Of course, such planes, besides drones, do not exist, but “fly-by-wire” technology that limits the need for input from a human while flying is already built into passenger jets, and it is surely only a matter of time until automation is possible for a plane full of passengers.

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