What you will see on future flights

To give the passenger an impressive flight experience, the sidewall panels are expanded with many 3D-displays that provide a great picture of the environment. Source: Supplied

BIGGER toilets to cater for overweight passengers and reversible seats so friends can sit face to face could soon be part of international flights.

The year’s Crystal Cabin Awards have released a shortlist of 47 entrants which are in the running for the seven awards in aircraft design features to be announced this week at a Hamburg aviation trade fair.

While some are still ideas on a drawing board and set to be introduced to premium classes first, others are already in the marketplace such as Row 44’s Inflight Wifi Live Television which lets passengers on some American flights watch live TV on their own smartphone or tablet while they fly.

The innovations reflect both the changes in the way we travel and the way we live.

The German-designed BigLavC will be the first airplane toilet on the market catering for the comfort of overweight passengers.

The makers of the new toilet cubicle say the design is a reaction to the rising body mass indices of people around the world.

Not only does the layout of the toilet make it easier for large people, or special needs passengers, to use the facilities, it is also pitched as a way for airlines to make money, with an integrated infotainment display in the loo targeting short commercials at a captive audience.

In-flight entertainment controlled by eye movements and hand gestures, by US company Thales. From the international aircraft design competition, Crystal Cabin Awards

Flight Centre executive general manager of marketing Colin Bowman said the in-flight experience had been transformed in recent years, with the addition to premium classes of innovations such as shower spas on Emirates flights and Virgin Atlantic’s double beds in its Upper Class Suite.

One of the more unusual ideas shortlisted for an award is an eyetracking and gesture control system for passengers in premium class to navigate their entertainment systems by looking at icons on a screen. Instead of fumbling for a remote in the dark to change channels or turn the volume, passengers will stare with intent at a certain spot on the screen.

Offshoots of the French Zodiac Aerospace company have five products on the shortlist of finalists, including a reversible seat. Like seats in some trains, the back flips over so that colleagues, friends or families can face each other and connect their fold-out trays to form a larger table.

A Dutch university project that has made it to the finalists is a tray table cabinet. The prototype replaces the normal airplane table tray with one that has a hinged lid, giving passengers access to a storage compartment for their phone and wallet, complete with USB charging and a headphone port.

While that is still in the design phase, a UK company has already released a tray table that cleans itself as it folds into the armrest.

A German concept of future cabin design lines the walls along the inside of the plane’s cabin with flexible LED screens that can project 3D augmented reality displays of the terrain below.

Last year’s winners and runners up of the Crystal Cabin Awards included Cathay Pacific’s new Business Class Suite, a collapsible change room, and Luthansa’s wireless infotainment system which provides video-on-demand to passenger’s own iPads and smartphones.

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