[PrimHelios]

Even with virtual windows, I think knowing that I can't directly see outside would make me extremely claustrophobic, and I think a lot of people would feel similarly.

All in all this is a cool concept, but I don't think it will be executed well. What happens when my "window" inevitably breaks (as technology is apt to do) and the illusion of being able to see is broken? What about annoying dead pixels or color banding? I can't imagine the displays being used are very high quality.

[Rotdhizon]

I'd think it'd be a disaster if those screens were to malfunction mid-flight and all of the sudden people realized they were in a box with no way to see out. I'm sure that would cause at least one person per flight to have a panic/anxiety attack. It's similar to walking with your eyes closed, you start to panic after a few seconds because you can't see where you're going and lose your sense of positioning/direction/balance. I hate flying, I don't think I could manage to make it on a plane with no windows at all.

[PuffinBlue]

And yet, millions of people are able to handle tunnels everyday without incident.

Metro lines don't tend to have much visible outside them (if anything at all save for some flashing lights), and there are extended scenarios like the Channel Tunnel where passengers basically don't see anything for over 30 minutes.

[pweissbrod]

if the tunnel was a tin can 3,000+ meters in the sky thats a different story

[PuffinBlue]

Only in the mind, and I think the large majority of people wouldn't care much for the difference.

Just make sure they can plug into Facebook/Instagram/YouTube/Social Media of choice and quite literally most people wouldn't care in the slightest.

That's not to say the negative reaction of a small minority wouldn't be vastly increased, but I think the masses would still be perfectly fine.

[taneq]

> Only in the mind

You say that like there's anywhere else that it matters

[Cerium]

Claustrophobia of the feet; that's why I wear sandals.

[lou1306]

> That's not to say the negative reaction of a small minority wouldn't be vastly increased

The main problem I see with this is that both the small minority and the large majority are locked together inside a tin can speeding through the stratosphere. I'd rather not find out how fast panic might propagate under such conditions.

[francisofascii]

The dimly lit walkway adjacent the track gives assurance an escape is available.

[nkoren]

On a lot of metros (eg. the deep tunnels in London) this isn't a thing. Doesn't seem to matter.

[jessaustin]

I know a couple of claustrophobic people. It "doesn't matter" because they wouldn't be caught dead in such a location. If it's OK not to have these people on planes (and maybe when everything is accounted it is OK), you're right.

[mynameisvlad]

If they're claustrophobic enough to the point where they can't even be in that position, then how can they handle a plane as it stands, even with windows? It's not like you can break the window in case of emergencies, and if anything, it's reinforcing the fact that you're 30k feet in the air in a tiny sealed box.

[fancyfish]

As a guy who gets anxiety on planes, it's because of the claustrophobia. In a tunnel, I am moving freely. In a plane, I'm stuck inside the plane for the duration of the flight, and I can barely move given the only moving you can do is to the lavatory and back.

[rajathagasthya]

30 minutes is doable. Emirates has 16+ hour long haul flights.

[mhb]

People also do OK in movie theaters, etc.

[reaperducer]

Movie theaters are huge space. Jets are a small space. And I don't have to be in a movie theater for 13 hours straight.

[makapuf]

Ok for security reasons or the odd claustrophobic person keep two windows just in case and keep 99% of benefits .

[anoncoward111]

Eh, I hate flying and I have a ton of anxiety. But when I'm on a train in a tunnel, theoretically I can't see anything and it doesn't bother me too much.

[PrimHelios]

There's a big difference between being on a train in a tunnel and being in a plane several thousand feet in the air.

[kevin_thibedeau]

In a train tunnel you could be suddenly be crushed by rock or water. You have time to contemplate your fate in a plane.

[anoncoward111]

I am acutely aware of that difference- however, both scenarios are enclosed tubes.

[Asooka]

And your brain is wholly enclosed in a sphere anyway, which itself is part in your body, so you kind of spend your whole life encased in a tube with no way out! Thus, rationally proving that claustrophobia is a myth and anyone claiming to suffer from it is no more credible than a flat-earther!

yes this is sarcasm

[anoncoward111]

I literally suffer from claustrophobia and agoraphobia you sarcastic nitwit

I'm trying to explain to you that a window with some clouds does not alleviate my claustrophobia. So, whether the windows are virtual or not make no difference to me, even if one malfunctions...

Jesus

[enjo]

Which is funny because I don't think I have a ton of anxiety but this was exactly what I was thinking. I was once stuck for a bit on a NYC Subway and I found it deeply deeply unsettling.

[ajnin]

The train has window. In my experience tunnels are always lit a little bit and you can see the wall passing by. Also it's rare to stay in a tunnel for more than a few minutes.

[finolex1]

The idea might seem uncomfortable, but realize that on airplanes today most windows are closed for the majority of the flight and people seem perfectly alright with it.

[orev]

“Majority” is not all. Even with a few windows still open you can still get the sense of the outside, and light shifts as the plane moves, etc. There’s a big difference between “majority” and “all”.

[GordonS]

Eh? I fly a lot and, with the exception of overnight flights, the windows are open most of the time.

[karthikb]

Emirates (subject of this thread) almost exclusively flies super long haul overnights. Their proposal wouldn’t work for the domestic 2-3 hr hops, but does work well for that 12 hour flight where one person trying to look outside wakes the whole cabin.

[jen20]

The 787 automatic tinting works for that, too, though.

[qaq]

"I can't imagine the displays being used are very high quality" ??? if they provide the amount of savings outlined I doubt spending extra 200K on quality screens will be an issue

[drdaeman]

Don't know about Emirates, but Etihad had two cameras available to watch on the in-flight entertainment screen (IIRC that was on 777), and quality looked so poor it reminded me of the very first 640x480 webcam I had in early 2000's.

Although that's probably regulatory stuff. Most governments don't let arbitrary airtcaft do aerial topography-grade stuff, and companies err on the side of caution.

[PrimHelios]

I really don't expect an airline company to actually spend those savings on quality. Just because they can do something doesn't mean they will

[qaq]

Emirates is not exactly known for cutting corners like that

[philipov]

If they provide the savings outlined, those savings will be pocketed as profit. Productivity improvements don't mean employees get to work less, either.

[Matticus_Rex]

> Productivity improvements don't mean employees get to work less, either.

The economics literature begs to differ, though it's not a 1:1, as the improvements are usually specific to an area of the market while the labor market is much less specific, which actually means that the benefits are less because they're dispersed over a wider group of people, marginally improving the lives of people who didn't even have productivity improvements in the work they do.

[qaq]

It's pretty hard to argue that airlines (at least outside of US) is a very competitive biz.

[billforsternz]

It's an extraordinarily competitive business.

[sushisource]

No one in this thread seemed to pick up on the mention in the article that they wanted to pipe in fiber optics and project. It sounds like a largely analog solution that would be unlikely to break.

[asdfman123]

But these will be on planes, meaning they will probably be engineered to hell and back. I'm sure they will almost never fail.

It's not like the software world, where we slap on a feature, do some mild testing, and maybe do a little bit more debugging when the user complains about it.

[netsharc]

But this is the (web-)software equivalent of a positioning of a button using CSS. 1 pixel off? Good 'enuff. Have you never flown on a plane where the audio or USB port is broken? These parts are not mission critical, and "20% of the virtual windows are broken? Good 'enuff."

[asdfman123]

True, but having windows at important places is mission critical, so maybe they'll all be well designed as a result.

[ams6110]

Non flight-critical stuff is not engineered to any super high standard. Consider the in-seat video displays, the fold-down tray tables, etc. I was once on a flight where the lavatory door wouldn't stay shut, and it kept banging open and closed every time the plane turned.

[mstrum]

Just like wifi internet, it will work flawlessly ;) lol

[Grue3]

>What happens when my "window" inevitably breaks

What if your glass window inevitably breaks? That actually happened recently and a passenger died.

[PrimHelios]

How many times a year does that happen? Now how many times a year do you hear about shitty monitors? Hell, on Reddit alone I see 2 or 3 posts about bad monitors every day

[mikeash]

For those unfamiliar with the incident, note that the window broke because an engine exploded and hit the plane with debris.

[fierro]

Really? Most of the time on flights the windows are shuttered anyways, most people open them during landing to watch it go down. I wouldn't be bothered in the slightest by lack of windows

[weaksauce]

I thought you were supposed to open them to let in light just in case you need to evacuate. Normalize your eyes so people can jump down the slide without delay of adjusting to the outside light and to be able to see inside the cabin without aux lighting.

[chrisseaton]

What do you do at night in a plane at the moment? Do you panic then?

[jasonjayr]

You're typically above the clouds. You can use the stars to get your bearings.

[chrisseaton]

Every time I'm on a night flight, everyone just puts their blinds down and goes to sleep. There's no mass hysteria. If you're in the economy section and not in the minority by a window you can't see anyway even when it's daylight.

I don't think this is any kind of issue.

[PrimHelios]

I've never been on one. I don't have the opportunity to fly much.

[EliRivers]

There may be some kind of step too far somewhere in the space of things that can be done for cheaper flights, but so far everything the airlines do that leads to paying less for a ticket has led to lots of grumbling and no shortage of sales :)

No windows in exchange for a discounted ticket; I think people will happily eat it up! If you sit in the middle of a row of ten seats (plus two aisles) the windows were just blobs of light in the distance anyway.

[paulmd]

> so far everything the airlines do that leads to paying less for a ticket has led to lots of grumbling and no shortage of sales :)

Customers have no real visibility into any of this, eg you're lucky to know what kind of aircraft will be flying a route let alone what interior configuration it will have (and all of that can and is regularly changed between booking and departure).

I'd gladly pay an extra $10 or $20 to fly with more legroom or a plane with windows, which would be a realistic reflection of what these cost carriers (10-20% extra), but these are major revenue centers for them. On the last flight I took, Delta wanted an extra $110 for an exit-row seat, on a flight that cost $165. That's just blatantly milking it. At time of departure, 5 of 6 seats were unfilled and they had to fill them with main-cabin passengers.

The only real control you have is over what carrier you fly with, and there are definitely people who will refuse to fly with budget carriers. By the time they are done nickel-and-diming you for having a carryon and everything, you end up in the same place anyway.

But even there, people only have a small degree of choice in carriers either. Delta is the vast majority of flights out of my airport (Wikipedia says 75%), I'd love to go with Alaska Airlines or someone but I don't really have a choice.

So, there's lots of reasons this isn't really an efficient market.

[EliRivers]

I'm more used to the European and Global markets where there is competition, and people go with the lowest price time after time.

Lots of people say they'd rather pay more for those extras, but the evidence indicates otherwise. Lower prices wins custom.

[rcostin2k2]

What do you think about few cameras streaming live from different points of the aircraft and the passengers having the possibility to switch between them, or between live and a geosynchronized prerecorded day or night flight with a clear sky ? Would be a perk for the middle aisle seats...

[CalRobert]

This is already the case on some flights. I know we had this on a KoreanAir A380 from LAX to Seoul a few years ago. The view was kind of underwhelming, for the most part.

[saalweachter]

What about a camera pointed straight ahead (maybe slightly downward) on each wingtip, and VR (binocular) headsets?

[andbberger]

https://xkcd.com/941/

[EliRivers]

I think that if people get a 10% cut in the ticket price, they'll happily sit in a box with no windows and no substitute for windows.