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| Glass-Bottomed Plane |
We’ve known about
glass-bottomed boats for a long time, but what about glass-bottomed planes? In
April of this year Richard Branson announced on the Virgin Atlantic blog that
he was going to be adding a new Airbus A320 to its fleet with a clear strip
down the middle made from aviation-standard glass, instead of the traditional
aisle.
The new plane was to assist
with a new route from Stansted to Aberdeen. Of course, the timing of the
announcement was crucial (check the month and think about it) but that doesn’t
seem to have stopped the story from enjoying an occasional flurry on social media.
At the time, the Daily Mail reported on the story and so did Chinese state
media, and it’s thought they were both ‘taken in’ on it all.
So will glass-bottomed
planes on commercial aircraft ever become a reality? Well, that seems highly
unlikely. Many people are nervous of flying at the best of times and it’s
unlikely a glass floor will put them any more at ease. What’s more, there’s
technology in place nowadays that would produce a similar end result much more
cost effectively. On take-off on a recent flight back from Crete, our TV
screens were replaced with footage from a camera filming the ground from the
underside of the plane.
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