Airbus has had plenty of truly horrifying ideas for how to pack more passengers onto a single plane, but the newest patent from the airplane giant is actually pretty easy to get behind. Though it is far from implementation (and may never even happen) the dream is simple: planes with cabins you can just swap out.

We all know how annoying and arduous it is to file into an airplane cabin. And while there are ways to speed that process up, this isn't one of them, but rather a way to speed up the process of getting planes off the ground. Instead of a plane pulling in, unloading, and then reloading, you could have a plane pull in and just swap its inbound cabin for an outbound one. That way you could do all the annoying filing-in before the plane's even at the airport.

There are some catches that could keep this from ever getting off the ground, however. Making sure that this detachable cabin doesn't detach in flight is going to be crucial, difficult and complicated. Also airports would have to get some sort of cabin-lifting cranes to make the whole thing work. That's a big barrier to entry, especially if the technology is patented by Airbus.

So it's probably pretty unlikely this will ever happen—companies file a lot of just-in-case patents they never execute on. But still, it's a fascinating solution to the problem of waiting around in the airport and we can never have too many of those.

Source: USPTO via Wired









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