This concept, unveiled by Windspeed Technologies last month, imagines an airliner with a viewing deck. The craft, arrayed more like a luxury vehicle than a crowded economy flier, includes a lounge setup in the back with a special pair of seats on a piston. Passengers could get in these seats and then ride up to a special bubble/dome viewing canopy, where they can look out at the sky in almost all directions. Airliner windows were originally designed to be much larger, but a pair of accidents with early Comet jets revealed the structural risk of big windows in the body of the plane. So making all the windows big isn’t a great idea, but a specially engineered dome (as strong as the windows in the cockpit) could probably work without jeopardizing the safety of the plane. The concept videos include both a tube-elevator design, as well as one featuring a staircase up to the dome. But it’s the dome itself, and not the way up to it, that’s exciting. The sky, a pure open gorgeous canvas of sky, available for anyone on the plane. At the very least, it’d be a world better than an in-flight screening of the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks squeakquel. Until these planes become reality, expect to see me hogging every window seat I get. [Via DesignBoom]
