These days, most planes used for transcontinental or ocean-hopping journeys are outfitted with screens for each passenger. But while it's great to choose your own movie or watch the flight map as much as you want, you've probably noticed that compared to any modern tablet, those screens are pretty old, small, and overall crummy. That's because those screens are updated every seven to 10 years, says Norbert Mueller, a senior vice president at Lufthansa Systems.
The company says it's got a solution to that problem---and it's so simple, we're kinda shocked no one's thought of it before.
One of the biggest reasons you're watching bad movies on old screens is the FAA’s Head Injury Criterion (HIC), which dictates (via a complicated equation) how big an impact your head can take in an emergency landing or aborted takeoff. The rules are there to make sure you survive (and preferably remain conscious) so you can escape a plane wreck. If your face flies into a screen that shatters really easily, or is so hard it doesn't give at all, it hurts your odds of getting out. So whatever's in front of you needs to protect you from injury as well as keep you entertained.
Any time an airline wants to make a change to the seats, it's got to go through all that testing again. That testing takes time and is expensive, so airlines are reluctant to go through it any more than necessary.
But for airlines that want to provide a modicum of modern technology to attract customers, offering screens almost a decade old is nutty. Four years after the iPad’s debut, the latest model is much thinner, has a superior camera, and even comes in gold. Whatever Apple has in three to six years will make the original tablet as appealing as a wood carving---and that original tablet probably would be an upgrade over a lot of the tech you find in the air now.
To make it easier to modernize the screens, Lufthansa Systems (a subsidiary of the German airline) developed a transparent plastic "window" that is strong enough to pass FAA testing and would go over whatever screen the airline installs. It works something like a visor: flip it down over the screen during takeoff and landing, then flip it up out of the way to reveal the screen when you want to watch a movie. Anything behind the screen wouldn't have to pass HIC tests, allowing airlines to swap out systems without being re-certified.
The slider is just a prototype for now and Lufthansa Systems has a patent pending. It’s a small part of the company's BoardConnect wireless onboard platform, which connects passenger screens or personal devices to a central server, cutting down on weight and fuel use.
Now we've got to hope Lufthansa Systems gets the slider onto the market in the next couple of years, so we watch the latest Transformers movie on a screen that wasn't installed when Shia LaBeouf was still the star.
