In the future, you could find yourself booking an Emirates flight without a real window seat.

The airline has just unveiled a new first class suite on board its latest aircraft that features "virtual windows" instead of real ones.

The President of Emirates, Tim Clarke, is hoping it will pave the way for removing all windows from future planes, which he says will make them lighter and faster.

"What we may have [in the next 20 years] is aircraft that are, and I hate to say this to a number of passengers, windowless," he told the BBC.

Here's how it would look and why the idea is being proposed.

So there's no windows on the outside …

But Mr Clarke says on the inside there will be "a full display of windows," which will beam in the images from the outside.

This will be done using fibre-optic camera technology. So, instead of being able to see directly outside, passengers will view images projected from outside the aircraft — which is almost like the real thing.

In fact, according to Mr Clarke, the technology beaming the images is even better than seeing it "with the naked eye".

But why use virtual windows instead of the real thing?

In revealing the new design, even Mr Clarke recognised that windowless planes would not appeal to "a number of customers".

But he said there were a number of benefits to removing windows, a key one being that it would save 50 per cent of the weight of an aircraft, "simply because in terms of build and structure and load [they] are quite a problem and you have to reinforce a fuselage to be able to take them".

"So if you have got a composite fuselage, which is produced in one drum … with no windows, the aircraft is automatically much lighter, the wings are already lighter because they are composite."

That means you need less propulsion to get the job done, which leads to less fuel burn and fewer environmental concerns.

Are there any safety concerns?

Not really, aviation expert Douglas Drury from the University of South Australia says.

"The idea that we have to look out and have the window shades raised during take-offs and landings is in the event of an emergency," he told the ABC.

He says having windows in critical points on the airplane, where you can have a clear view out onto the wings or where emergency exits are, could be a compromise.

"The regulator may get to a point, they could say you can do whatever you want from row one to 25 but on the emergency exits you have to have a window there," he said.

"Or you could also set up a system where the camera technology had its own power pack and the windows could be generated via batteries and project that image in real time in the event of technical failure."

In fact, he says, having a windowless frame as it has been reported strengthens the airplane.

"I think this is a very big step because they have to build the support structure around the windows and as we've seen recently the windows are vulnerable to penetration, to breaking," he said.

"That happened with a Southwest Airlines jet in the United States recently, the engine blew and the window was gone and the passenger was pulled out of the airplane.

"That is a structural issue and not having windows would be somewhat of a safety barrier."

Sorry, this video has expired Oxygen masks dropping on board a Southwest Airlines flight after an engine blew.



And what about claustrophobic customers?

While it might be good news for the airlines and possibly the environment, many customers have already raised concerns about what it would feel like to be on a plane with no windows.

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The editor of travel site The Points Guy tried the suite last year and appeared to like it. Here's what it looked like.

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Is anything else changing?

Mr Clarke also discussed the possibility of streaming Netflix and YouTube on airplanes.

But he wasn't optimistic on it being an option in the near future.

"What has become apparent is that there is a groundswell of opinion that suggests we should be streaming Netflix, YouTube and everything into the airplanes," he said.

"Now, I have to tell everybody that — apart from going across the domestic US operations — that's extremely difficult to stream, given the bandwidth that we have for 520 people all to start streaming your Netflix or YouTube, etc across the Arctic, the North Pole, when we're going along the Wesley operations into the West Coast of the US from Dubai."