Take away our windows and you take away our sanity and soul. If we want to be trapped in a place with no natural light, lots of fake sky and mind control, we can go to a Las Vegas casino

Perhaps you’ve seen the photos of what the future of air travel might be. I have, and frankly, I’m terrified.

The aircraft of the future isn’t significantly different to the current model – on the outside at least. Passengers will still be crammed into a ridiculous tin can that moves through the clouds filled with people’s hopes and dreams. And after a few hours of plane food, some pretty interesting smells as well.

Rest assured the discomfort of air travel will never change. The future of flying sees a visual shift. It has no windows. This new (lack of) vision is not the work of a comic nerd who miraculously made Wonder Woman’s invisible plane come to life. Invisible planes will always seem like a good idea until someone has to go to the toilet and drop their duds for the world to see at 30,000 feet.

No, in the new planes the entire surface of the interior walls features a real-time projection of the sky outside. Except when the plane is hurtling through a storm at 600km an hour. That’s when the backup tape kicks in. Obviously.

The reason given for taking away our (air)portholes is purely economic. No windows means less weight in the fuselage, making them cheaper to fuel and fly. So, it’s not really about us. Guaranteed, though, it will be sold to us that way. The advertising images will have travellers so happy in their magic flying cloud they don’t notice the turgid coffee breath of the guy next to them or the constant elbowing by the lady in a parachute tracksuit who insists on getting up and stretching every half hour to ward off deep vein thrombosis.

And the bonus for the airlines? Not giving humans real windows into the real world outside encourages ignorance, thus making us far easier to control. The effect will not be dissimilar to that other place with no windows and no natural light but a whole lot of fake, painted sky: Las Vegas casinos.

In terms of sedating the masses, then, it’s no windows for a win. But the designers clearly haven’t thought this one through properly. A beautiful sky projected on a flat canvas looks great on paper, until humans bring their shit with them. Travel will always be a big, smelly, uncomfortable mess. No amount of scenic fairyfloss floating around little Tarquin, who’s standing up in one of those baby baskets howling his heart out – FOR SEVEN HOURS – will make the trip easier on anyone.

By taking our windows away, any last drops of the romance of flying will finally be squeezed out of the slowly dying beast. All those lovely memories of faces glued to tiny holes trying to get a final glimpse of a lover or family members before departing will be redundant.

Waving a teary goodbye is the backbone of movies and romance novels because it hurts exactly where it should. At a very human level. Goodbyes are the hardest things.

Besides, I like my little plane windows and so does this guy. Drinking a glass of almost undrinkable white wine while resting my head on the plastic and watching the world I live in – only in miniature – sure feels like freedom (as jumping out of planes does for other people).

Please don’t take that away to replace it with some sort of videogame simulacrum. Sometimes it’s nice to peer out of a porthole and see the reality and to deal with all the emotional baggage that doing so dredges up, rather than cover up with some fake happy clouds from a pretend place. I can get that kind of view elsewhere.