While the below proposal might seem far-fetched, it is one of a number of plans being considered by engineers at Airbus, the European aerospace giant.
Airbus wants to build a passenger plane with a completely transparent fuselage. At the push of a button the captain would a send an electrical pulse through a hi-tech ceramic skin making the main body of the plane see-through.
The extraordinary design would allow travellers to look down on cities and landscapes thousands of feet below or gaze up at the heavens, giving them the sensation of floating unassisted through the sky.
"Passengers in an airplane like this would experience flight in a completely new way," Airbus' head of research and technology, Axel Krein, told Der Spiegel. So if you have a fear of flying I don’t think that this would be the plane for you.
Funny thing is Airbus have not given us any drawings of what this might be like.
Other developments envisaged by Mr Krein's team include an aircraft skin that can repair itself in the event of cracks or breaches and streamline engines that are embedded in the plane's fuselage rather than attached to its wings.
The company claims nano-materials could also be used to enable seats to be 'self-cleaning'. 'In the future each passenger will feel he or she is sitting on a brand new airplane about to take off on its maiden flight’ Now that would be a bonus, maybe we should have the same technology for all public seating.
The report also suggests that 'morphing' seats will be able to adjust to the shape of the passenger for a snug fit and that holographic projections could be used in the cabin to create virtual decors. “So imagine, if you will, stepping in to your pre-selected themed cabin, relaxing into a perfectly clean, ecologically grown seat that changes shape to suit you and looking up through the transparent ceiling at the Milky Way in all its glory,” at an altitude of more than 32,000 feet, the company writes.
"We told our engineers to give their imaginations free rein. What emerged were completely realistic visions of flight in the year 2050," Mr Krein said."Our people are grounded in reality, after all. And most of the necessary technology already exists." Maybe all this is just up in the air we will just have to wait another 40 years or so to see!
