FlightCabs

It’s that time again when the world’s aircraft companies and operators descend on Farnborough to show the country what the latest trends in aviation are. Add to that a good splash of amazing historical aircraft and you have one of the best days out. The public open days are on Saturday and Sunday this week and I certainly plan to attend.

The one aircraft that I’m particularly interested in seeing and has already got the media buzzing is the boeing dreamliner. This is the first commercial passenger aircraft to be made from carbon reinforced plastic and offers a completely new future for air travel. It’s said to be extremely fuel efficient which means that this mid-size aircraft will have the same range as the big jets. It’s also very quiet which will please a lot of people living around airports such as Heathrow.

Passenger comfort is greatly improved because of the new materials used to build the aircraft. The materials are stronger than traditional aircraft building materials and do not corrode. This means there’s more headroom  and better air quality for passengers.   The most disappointing part for me though from what I could see from the news reports of the plane is the size of windows. Early mock up’s and designs of the aircraft showed the planes with almost panoramic windows, the actually plane appears to have larger windows but not that much larger than traditional aircraft and that’s a little disappointing.

Hopefully it will not be too long before this aircraft has got all it’s certification and is flying commercially. I’ll certainly be looking forward to taking a flight on the aircraft once it starts operating out of Heathrow. It’s bound to be as exciting as my first flight on the Airbus A380. The dreamliner is probably going to be only the first in a whole line of new super-efficient aircraft with low emissions that are going to be developed over the next few years and that has to be a good thing. Travel is a great thing to be able to do and we need to reduce it’s impact on the planet if we are going to be able to carry on traveling in a sustainable way.

Related articles

• Blog: Dreamliner’s candy-pink screens and huge windows (cnn.com)
• You: Asia travel surge boosts airplane-makers’ fortunes (france24.com)
• Is Boeing’s Dreamliner the future of the skies? (channel4.com)
• Dreamliner lands at Farnborough (bbc.co.uk)