By Robert Schrader
Weird and Amazing Travel Expert, about.com
If you pondered the future of air travel back in the 1960s, you'd have probably arrived at some, well, futuristic conclusions. It was the beginning of the jet age, after all – not to mention, the height of the space age – and with governments around the world investing heavily in aviation and aeronautics, the vision of the 1990s presented in pop culture (think flying cars à la The Jetsons) might not have seemed so far off.
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Unfortunately, we all know how that turned out. Even
supersonic travel, a relatively small leap in the grand scheme of our
species' technological capabilities, proved inaccessible for most of the
planet during its short test period, which effectively ended with the fatal crash of the Concorde in 2000.
For this and other reasons, the status quo of aviation in the mid-2010s
is not as far off from what it was in the 1960s as one might think.
These
days, it's cost-efficiency and eco-friendliness that take precedence,
not sensational design and mind-numbing speeds – and that's a trend we
can expect will continue.
The airplanes flying in the skies of tomorrow might
not be as wild as some of us are hoping, but that doesn't mean they
won't be revolutionary.
The Sky Whale
Well, some of the airplanes of tomorrow aren't wild – others are. The so-called "Sky Whale," a future airplane envisioned by designer Oscar Viñals of Spain,
would seem pretty out of place at LAX or JFK these days. A
triple-decker behemoth that dwarfs modern jumbos like the 747 and A380,
the aptly-named beluga of the big blue horizon would feature futuristic
elements such as tilting engines that enable vertical takeoff, virtual
windows that give everyone a sky view and solar cells that lessen the
aircraft's burden on the environment.
The Future of Flying, According to Airbus
While
certain individuals and firms are designing, naming and even marketing
tomorrow's airplanes, big names in the aviation of industry are taking a
more abstract approach. European giant Airbus, for example, has
presented a campaign known as "Smarter Skies,"
a vision of how flying might look, feel and impact the environment by
the year 2050. Heavier on pollution solutions and logistics than
anything out of science fiction (we'll arrive sooner not necessarily
because of higher speeds, but because of more efficient air traffic
control), it's nonetheless a future worth aspiring to.
Boeing's Next Generation
In
spite of its lofty name, Boeing's latest project, the 787 Dreamliner,
might not seem like a game-changer, particularly when you consider all the trouble it had getting off the ground.
Yet improvements that go unnoticed the naked eye, such as composite
wings and fuselage, a more humid, less pressurized cabin and a markedly
improved level of efficiency, are much more in line with what we can
expect the future of aviation to look like that some more extravagant
pictures of it. Boeing plans to continue this subtle (but definitely not
minor) evolution with the 777-X, the next generation of its popular 777
airplane, which will incorporate technology from the 787.
