The airplane maker has in a vision for air travel in 2050 foreseen that a catapult climb during take-off could be the solution for crowded cities and airports in the future.
The Smarter Skies vision also said that the current messing about around airports before landing could be replaced with a shortened, steeper landing distance where the engine would slow down earlier and be quieter.
Charles Champion, Executive Vice President Engineering at Airbus, says: “Our engineers are continuously encouraged to think widely and come up with `disruptive’ ideas which will assist our industry in meeting the 2050 targets we have signed up to.”
The French-based company that previously has predicted that the world needs 28,200 new airplanes to be made before 2031, wrote in its statement: “As space becomes a premium and mega-cities become a reality, this approach could also minimise land use, as shorter runways could be utilised.”
In a paradox to this, Airbus recently launched a “superjumbo” which just like Boeing 747 needs a runway that is longer than the minimum length, writes the BBC.
Other future air travel vision were ‘highly intelligent aircrafts’ able to calculate and choose the most efficient and environmentally friendly routes and airplanes flying in bird formations to reduce drag and use less energy.
Air transport consultant John Strickland told BBC: “I’d tend to be a bit sceptical of whether we will actually see this development as envisioned.
“Shorter runways would certainly require some more radical – and likely expensive – technological developments.”
Image via Airbus.