I wish there was as much innovation in the airline industry as there is in the car industry.
There is an insane amount of inovation, just not for passengers. Ive been a UAL share holder for a fewyears now and from time to time, we get updates on R&D and speculative investments the company is making.
Off the top my head, UAL specifically is working on
- Electric air planes
- Vertical lift airplnes
- Planes that run on biodiesel/canola oil
- Super sonic airplanes through a subsidiary company called "boom"
- Normalizing in-flight showers
- And staff automation
of all these innovations , the super sonic stuff excites me the most. Currently airlines stay just beneath the sound barrier(which varies with temp or altitude). 300mph-550mph. Now imagine if we could double that or even increase that speed by 1.5X safely and quietly.
That would turn a 5hr flight from NYC to LA into a 2.5-3.5hr flight. A trip to australia from LA, like our brehs
@International Koala and
@Sukairain got to deal with, is currently an ungodly 15-18hrs. United is currently working on doing that in only 8hours, breh
