http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... less-plane

No, it's not a Ryanair flight

Doubt they'll be popular. Boeing and Airbus are both making a big deal of bigger windows on their latest planes being better for passengers.
Screens can't replace natural light .

Agreed, and replacing individual windows with lots of large LCD panels doesn't sound very energy saving. You will need several cameras outside and multiple lines of screens running along both sides of the plane. All the electronics won't be light and they will drain extra power from the engines, meaning more fuel.

I would be interested to see how much fuel will be saved and how much they cost for installation and maintenance compared to windows. There might be a safety aspect, but you don't hear of that many windows blowing out.

By not having windows it would allow for greater pressure differentials between the inside and outside so potentially higher and faster routes. Possibly.

Windows are the best thing about planes, next to the vast savings in time spent travelling, obviously.

Exactly, Herr Foggster!

The two main problems with windows are their mass and the changes to the fuselage structure necessary to incorporate them. In particular the changes to the stringers means that the longitudinal strength is significantly affected. The upshot of this is seen in aircraft like the 777-300ER in which every part of the fuselage vibrates like a dishwasher.

This also means that we might be able to get away from building flying tubes and on to something where most of the body is generating lift. That's where the big savings will come.

You see, that makes sense. To say that screens will save energy, compared to windows doesn't seem to make sense, without such a context.

I'm happy to do away with the windows. On something like a 747 only 20% of passengers directly benefit and most of the time there's nothing to see anyway.

Surely you don't need cameras on every plane, you just need one plane to fly the route with cameras on, then you can play that footage back on the screens on all the other planes on that route after that. It's not as if people are going to know, and in fact if they did know would most of them care?

I'm not 100% convinced about that one. If you're going through turbulance or a storm but the screens are showing clear skies I think there would be a fairly good argument for what the screens are showing to be b@llocks and I suspect that you wouldn't necessarily want to get into a situation where the passengers think they're being willfully lied to by the crew.

A fair point but one I think passengers would actually get used to. People are willing to buy into all sorts of fictions if they think it makes their life more pleasant or less hassled. If the carriers are up front about 'our planes have no windows, but we're going to show you related imagery on wall mounted screens during the flight in case you're bored' the grumbling would soon go away. It's less true on short haul over land but the fact is on long haul especially over water, there's actually hardly anything to see out of the windows anyway. Clouds and blue sky or darkness, depending on the time of day. For hours on end. The reason we have in flight movies is because the view isn't enough to keep people happy. Would people really say 'I've paid for that incredibly monotonous view, I want to see it!'

Yes, initially, they might complain. But give someone a choice of a seat on a windowed plane, or a seat on a windowless plane for £30 less, which do you think most are going to pick? The bare fact is only about 25% of people on a long haul get a window seat anyway. The other 75% apparently can survive without having one even now.

You can't lie to people as to whether the plane has windows or not, people can see the plane before they board it. But you can say 'this way is better and here's a thing to compensate for it'. They'll go along with that. Once you've taken that step, whether the view is the actual view is kind of a smaller step.

Jon

I've always preferred a window seat where possible but the seats, window position and my statues mean i don't as much benefit out of them as others might. I've seen the pic in the above article and it's fine for when you're awake and alert but it appears to be quite brighter than just light from windows.

For short journeys, I'm on my ipad. For longer journeys, I nap, watch films, read and play games. Windows are a very small part of the experience. In some ways I would miss the natural light. In other ways, it won't make a difference.

Planes are one of the few places I get travel sick. Not having windows, or at least a view of what would be out of the window would be a problem for me, I tend to spend a lot of time looking out of the windows to help my equilibrium and stop the vomming so it would have to be a fair approximation of what my body was feeling in order to stop the nausea.