Airbus submits patent application for windowless airplane cockpit!

An article published in the Seattle Post-Intelligence describes a patent application from European aerospace company Airbus in which pilots fly aircraft entirely through electronic means. The patent application, number US20140180508 A1, is titled "Aircraft with a cockpit including a viewing surface for piloting which is at least partially virtual"

"For aerodynamic reasons," explains the patent application’s description, "the nose should ideally be lancet-shaped. However, the housing in the nose for radar, a landing gear, and especially for the cockpit, requires a much more complex shape and structure to be provided, with numerous radii of curvature." It would be better, says the patent, if the cockpit were moved into some other area of the aircraft and the pilot equipped with entirely electronic means of observing and controlling the aircraft’s flight. It also means that the cockpit could be placed literally anywhere inside the aircraft’s volume, including in the cargo hold or even in or near the aircraft’s empennage!

According to the application, the non-windows cockpit would contain "a screen and associated means for projection of various "scenes," including the environment immediately that in front of the aircraft, and also a device with lasers for forming a holographic image to display items like "a 3D mesh of the earth’s surface"

This patent application is just a patent application ofcourse. It doesn’t address issues such as exactly how to create functional interactive holographic aircraft flight instrumentation. Nor does it talks about like what happens during an emergency situation with partial or total power loss.

Don’t expect to actually see a passenger aircraft without cockpit windows any time soon as its more like a sci-fi idea and implementation of it may take great amount of time.

Via : ArsTechnica