Future flying in Hamburg, Germany

We like, totally forgot to register for the event of the year: the Airline Interior Expo Hamburg. Thankfully CNET's got some pictorial highlights of what it'll be like flying in the future; expect to see some serious tech on the 300 passenger superliner Airbus a350, like LED mood lighting, skyscape projectors, and an "infinity dome"; OnAir, an Airbus subsidiary, showed off their on-board GSM mini-cell (which will be rolled out on Air France in 2007); Digecor had their DigeplayerXT PMP with WiFi, 8-inch screen, 60GB drive, and credit card reader (of course); and our fav was the Contour "Solar" bed / seat / mobile office (pictured) with full entertainment system, power for your bag of devices, and massage feature. Suddenly killing hours in a highly pressurized frigid cabin miles above the Earth's surface seems kind of enticing. Kind of.

[jsforbes @ Apr 23rd 2006 12:52AM]

I want big, big windows. Some people like to look out the window. How many times do you get the chance to look down on the earth from six miles up?

[Special_K @ Apr 23rd 2006 1:23AM]

Give it 2 years and all the upholstery and plastic will be worn out on these aircraft. Furthermore, economy class looks poised to maintain its discomfort and paucity of amenities- airlines seem to think that bigger planes=more chumps per flight, as opposed to more room per chump. Also, what is an infinity dome? It sounds like a nightclub or some feng sui crap.

[emm @ Apr 23rd 2006 1:38AM]

"forgot to register to register for"
other than that, after this, there will be actual room in an airplane.

[Brandon @ Apr 23rd 2006 1:57AM]

I don't think this is going to be on any affordable flights anytime soon, soon meaning ever since most airline companies are losing money.

[Techie @ Apr 23rd 2006 2:43AM]

It's interesting that marketing/business folk are targeting the rich people who can afford these luxuries.

It's sad that the aerospace industry has not really commercialized faster planes. With the exception of the now discontinued Concorde, flying time has not really changed in the last 10 to 15 years. The Concorde itself shows that the technology is readily available. But I guess a struggling airline industry and soaring gas prices may be reasons why companies are not investing into developing faster planes for commercial use.

Nice big leather seats with nifty gadgets may be luxury flying. But getting half way around the world in 5 hours is really first class.

[William Murray @ Apr 23rd 2006 3:28AM]

Gotta agree with emm. I love Engadget for all it's gadgety goodness, but how about a little grammar to go along with it? I'll probably get some kind of snark award for this comment, but it kills me to see three glaring mistakes in a four sentence post. I'm not asking for much, maybe just a quick proofread to eliminate the "to register to register," "got some of pictorial highlights," and "never seems kind of" mistakes.

[Razib Ahmed @ Apr 23rd 2006 5:12AM]

Nice but it will not be afforadable for many of us. This seems to be th tragedy that those of us who realize the value of this kind of thing cannot use them and those people who have no idea or no interest will get the upper hand just for having some more money. this is really the tragedy of modern science.

[Alex Newman @ Apr 23rd 2006 5:23AM]

Is this not just Upper Class on Virgin?

[lwlwl @ Apr 23rd 2006 5:37AM]

I wonder how this stuff would look after slamming into a mountain?

[Nathan @ Apr 23rd 2006 7:31AM]

I've flown in everything from Air India Economy to Virgin Upper and BA First classes - and flying for 12 hours or more sucks regardless of what the cabin is like - it just sucks a little bit less in Biz or First. Of course the masseuse and stand up bar in Virgin Upper Class make it more bearable.

[Joshua @ Apr 23rd 2006 7:49AM]

I don't know what these whingers are on about...forgetting to register to register...is a perfectly acceptable use of language. I read that and understand it to mean that there may be certain media criteria/information that need to be registered before an invitation will be recieved/sent out to register for a semi-closed event.

Either that, or the person responsible was snorting crack when writing the article. One or the other.

Stop whinging about the proofreading, and start whinging about the airline revenue stream of more chumps per plane. I dig the new stuff...I want the Virgin Business class available for my Syd-Lax flights when I actually get to take them...


What do we want?...More room for the chumps...when do we want it? Now!

[Bill @ Apr 23rd 2006 9:25AM]

I belive its the AIRBus 380

[Pav @ Apr 23rd 2006 10:00AM]

The Virgin Upper class is easily tolerable when you're about the same age as the crew :)

[Mark @ Apr 23rd 2006 11:57AM]

I've always wondered -- do airline executives look at pictures of these proposed amenities for laughs as they cram more and more people into coach, or do they never consider them in the first place? Most airlines haven't even managed to put personal video screens in seatbacks, after all; I don't think we can expect much better than that for many years to come.

[Daniel @ Apr 23rd 2006 12:13PM]

I think "to register to register for" was an ironic statement on the exclusiveness of the Airline Interiour Expo :
It's suggesting that you dont need to just register to get in, you have to register to achieve the opportunity to register to get in.

[Eric @ Apr 23rd 2006 12:38PM]

I think conferences like this one are just "feel good" marketing stunts put on by the airline industry to get people to think that in the "near future" things will be sooo much better than they are.

Which is just a bunch of bull since they can't even ditch one row of seats so that my arms don't have to fall asleep for lack of room. Pretty sad when your average movie theater seems downright roomy when compared to an airline flight.

[blah @ Apr 23rd 2006 12:56PM]

Hmm, how about instead of making things most airlines won't even think of using (can this cram even more passengers into a square inch of space? no? I thought not) and start working on some new propulsion systems and making airplanes in general more efficient. When we get to the age of $20 airplane tickets?

[Scott @ Apr 23rd 2006 1:39PM]

So Airbus is trying to wow us with snazzy interiors, high-tech entertainment options and the sci-fi sounding "skyscapes"? *Yawn* Airbus might first want to address some bigger problems such as demands by their biggest potential customers for a top-to-bottom redesign of the A350 (estimated to cost as much as US$10 billion; almost twice as much as the original design budget), or the fact that Boeing's 787 has outsold the A350 by a margin of nearly 3:1.

http://businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2006/gb20060330_075258.htm

[Peter Reynolds @ Apr 23rd 2006 4:02PM]

I wish designers would use their powers to improve conditions in peasant class.
On long flights to the other side of the world I want to lay down. How about seats that convert to bunk beds? The airlines could stack us. It worked on slave ships...

[JDUB @ Apr 23rd 2006 11:26PM]

Sounds like Airbus should keep in mind the failing financial state of the airline industry and think IKEA. If someone gets airsick and pukes on it, you can just throw it out.

[psxp @ May 2nd 2006 12:52PM]

Air New Zealand's Boeing 747s have something similar _already_ in business Class - I just flew 13hrs from NZ to Los Angeles in Premium Economy next to the business class and saw seats similar to these. www.airnewzealand.com probably has more details on it.

[James @ Jun 7th 2007 8:16PM]

4 times the room = 4 times the cost. As for faster aeroplanes. Ye olde speed of sound limits the speed. To go faster, you need a tougher plane with different, less efficient engines (no big round fan, it would shake to bits). Hence the Concorde costing you all the francs in France but just holding a hand bag. The newer 787 type planes promise to be up to 20% more fuel efficient.