it's funny to see how people do not accept modernity or any possiblity. As long as it is new for them, it should not happen. Everything should stay as it is.

Yeah, 20 years ago, if we would have talked about Ipad or Iphone here, maybe some of you would say "oh no way !! you're kidding ! you touch screen of your phone and if you missed it, you may call a wrong number and blablabla"

guys, please, get real.

If planes still have winshield, it is not for your own pleasure to post nice pics on FB huh. Yeah, we know, "best office view" and blablabla...no no...it's because we do not have choice at the time of speaking.

But the day where, windowless plane will be possible and less expensive, believe me, companies will not care what you think or not.

It is ALL about money. Not for your pleasure.

wake up and be open minded. Don't be so backboned !

Windowless cabins (and presumably Flight Decks) are well on their way.

Windowless supersonic private jet with live-streaming screens

So thinking longer term, is this just a stepping stone for the flight deck to be located at the fwd freight bay or porta cabin?

You decide!

Where are the Mercury 7 when you need them?

There must be a window, with explosive bolts; so the astronaut....
So the Astronaut Pilot can see out and escape if necessary...

"Yah, Zer could be zie window in da Hatch for the astronaut Pilot to ziee out off. "

I see huge commercial possibilities here, even with a conventional aircraft layout you could stuff at least another 4 1st Class seats up front and make the pilots sit in the back near the bogs, a money-maker all around!!!
:E

And they had to reconsider that after it turned out that the explosive bolts could fire unintentionally in the event of a short circuit (e.g. in case of contact with water). They almost drowned a Mercury astronaut (Gus Grissom) because of that one!

Dear underfire...there was never a Zulu on the bridge of NCC-1701. There was Mr Sulu, just saying........

Underfire.

787 is not touch screen. Cursor controlled. :ok:

As is the A350XWB, apparently:
A350 XWB News: Touch Screens not currently available in A350 XWB cockpit, but not discharged for the future.

Whilst there are many things which are possible utilising technology, it can be hard to determine the balance between "just because we can, should we", or being stuck in the dark ages (no pun intended).

One should never under estimate the psychological aspect of particular things to the punters. Often raw statistics showing advantages to safety or cost will have no effect whats so ever in some cases.

For example, if ever there was a move to pilot-less commercial aircraft, well good luck with that. The comfort knowing that there somebody up front with just as much to loose as you is a good thing. The problem, is thats not always the case.

Sure, but at the risk of repeating myself - the existence of the patent application doesn't mean anything other than if some person or company does decide - at some unspecified point in the future - to build an aircraft which uses the technology specified in the patent, they'll have to pay Airbus for the privilege of doing so. It's a technology market thing, not an aviation thing. :ok:

Patents are not forever. They have limited life and then they expire.

By the time anyone seriously thinks about doing a windowless cockpit, the patent will probably be dead. Besides, Boeing has prior art that they can probably use to show that the Patent is essentially useless.

Something I'm well aware of - and believe me, I'm no fan of the way patents have been (ab)used - especially in the tech sector over the last decade and a half!

The point I was trying to make was that, prior art or no, this is far more likely to be a speculative move for potential financial gain than it is a statement of intent that Airbus intend to use the technology in airliners any time soon.

It's a damned stupid idea. Where is the fail safe in projected displays vs a window? It's bad enough having crippled flight controls and limited instrumentation following severe electrical failure, but to be completely blind?

As for the idea of a cockpit in the base of the fin, two major issues come to mind. 1) how do you pressurise it without a blow out? 2) the translational movements of the pilots' seats will conflict with their rotational movements and the visual elements, creating disoreintation and CFIT events.

Only an amateur engineer could come up with such folly. It shows how little input pilots have at Airbus. God, how I hate their aeroplanes!

Some 20 years ago I participated in a meeting just south of Stockport where the subject was discussed along with a pilotless aircraft. The objective was to take a strategic view of commercial aviation and the means of reducing operating costs.
The pilotless topic was quickly revised to a single pilot, which would still reduce costs.
The windowless concept was being considered in order to reduce aircraft weight and thus cost. Glass, even plastic is relatively heavy along with the supporting structure/strength, and complexities of fuselage shape and aerodynamics of a cockpit. It’s much simpler and lighter to design and build a pressurised symmetric tube than a complex nose section with holes in it.

The windowless ideas were put on the back burner to be reassessed in line with advancements in structural materials and other means of cost reduction; there may come a point where the cost savings from having no windows vs investment and risk were not well balanced with the use of a plastic fuselarge.
The ideas of a single pilot aircraft were kept alive, if only as differing levels of training and qualification for two pilots. There were some interesting points relative to using two ‘equally qualified’ pilots for monitoring vs one qualified pilot together with technological monitoring.
The main risk in not having a pilot was that of public perception (even though driverless trains are being accepted), where a second pilot would be required if only for landing in the event of a combined incapacitation and systems failure. Which given some views of current operations might not be far from that trend.

A " driverless train" or, I think, most moving vehicles can STOP. An aircraft has to continue to move - perhaps in a holding pattern for a while, until the fuel is all gone.


I do not know how long a Harrier could remain stationary on "Auto Hover".

At present, a sharp eye can detect the momentary glint of the sun off another aircraft at extreme range, the beat of a wing, and smoke arising from an unusual event.

IMO, until we have camera systems that will pick out events such as these with greater reliability than the basic human eye, then the camera systems will be non-starters as well as the associated windowless cockpit.

It has to be better to make sense. Almost as good as the human eye just is not sufficient. To be better, an artificial vision system will have to have a certain degree of interpretive smarts built into it.

At the moment, from what I've seen, artificial vision systems for use in an aviation setting are only pretty good.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I always thought that in order to file a patent application, one had to have some kind of a working model. In other words you can't just file a patent on an idea. Can you?
If it turns out I'm wrong then I'm going to patent anti gravity and wait til it's invented! :)

Most patents can be filed without a working protoype. Anyhow, I can see that technology is going forward, whether we like it or not.

This idea, me no like. The day an operator asks me to fly a windowless cockpit, I'll go fishing. If that's the way they want it, they can find drone operators (they'll never be pilots), I'll take my bike and it the trails, as much fun.

The astronauts on Apollo mission said they wouldn't fly in the bloody re-entry capsule without a window, although they had no use for it. They got their window. Of course it's easier to have a handful of astronauts to stick together than thousands of pilots.

Chances are, in the near future, one idiot will actually come forward and offer to pay for himself to have the privilege of flying a windowless cockpit. :ugh:

Er, at least one backup projector run off a different electrical bus?

Not that I'm advocating this design - it seems to have many potential "gotchas", and as I said, I suspect this is just an R&D tech "patent grab" rather than a workable real-world solution.