London - The days of craning your neck to catch a glimpse of the ground through a plane’s tiny windows could be numbered.
A British team is working on the first windowless jet that would use state-of-the art virtual displays to give passengers a panoramic view of their surroundings.
Instead of conventional portholes, cabins would be lined with super-thin ‘digital wallpaper’ on to which real-time images of fluffy clouds or the distant ground could be projected.
But as well as giving passengers a far better view, removing windows will make aircraft lighter – helping to lower fuel costs and potentially reduce air fares.
The concept could become a reality in less than five years, according to experts at the Centre for Process Innovation in Sedgefield, County Durham.
The screens are made from bendable sheets of plastic as thin as a piece of paper and use semiconductor inks to create moving, glowing images.
Seat-backs could also be coated in the material, enabling in-flight films to be shown on far larger screens than is possible now.
One US firm, Spike Aerospace, has already announced plans for a windowless private jet, the Spike S-512 Supersonic, due to be launched in 2018.
However, it could be a decade or more before the technology is seen on commercial flights. - Daily Mail