Floating furniture, noise-canceling seats: Is this the future of air travel?

The shortlist for the Crystal Cabin Awards 2022, have been announced, treating us to a glimpse at the next-gen world of air travel.

Hailed by organizers as “a creative playfield where designers, engineers and visionaries come together to plan the future of the airplane passenger experience,” it’s even more reason to keep saving those points for future trips where some of these gadgets and inflight gizmos may one day be rolled out.

Spanning eight categories, the innovative concepts and cabin designs aren’t just about comfort and creating sci-fi-like future projections. They also tackle the many challenges of tomorrow. Areas such as sustainability and the continued threat of COVID-19 are all addressed, with nominees including major aerospace firms, boutique design studios and even bold students looking to make a mark of their own.

Related: 5 simple tech innovations that would revolutionize the travel experience

Here are some of the designs that piqued our interest…

Floating furniture

Since the dawn of commercial air travel, designers have strived for ways to maximize cabin space while juggling comfort, profit and increasingly bolt-tight safety restrictions. It’s not an easy task, but design studio Teague and component manufacturer NORDAM have seemingly surpassed themselves with this "floating furniture" collaboration, which brings wide-body comfort to the single-aisle business class in left-field fashion.

Dubbed Elevate, and aiming to increase space for passengers, all seating and fixtures are connected to the sidewall and aisle as opposed to the floor. We can imagine that after boarding this beautiful cabin, the only thing left on the floor will be your jaw.

Related: Could this coffee shop seat design make business travel more productive?

Another idea with the potential to change the way we sit on planes is from Jiayi Yu, a student at Reutlingen University. Yu's swivel seat design -- known as Shift Cabin Interior (seen above) -- allows formerly fixed seats to be arranged in a variety of positions, be it for business or relaxing in the skies, providing airlines with another way of increasing the number of passengers without making them feel squeezed.

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Noise-canceling seats

If you’re still left in awe at the power of noise-canceling headphones during flights, you’ll appreciate this idea from ACM Aircraft Cabin Modification’s MYZONE, which effectively turns your entire seat into an active noise cancelation (ANC) pod, embedding said tech behind your headrest.

It's supposedly compatible with any airline seat, and the team behind it says the system can also use window panels to achieve a 3 dB reduction in airplane noise by releasing conflicting sound waves that effectively neutralize the offending ones.

Related: The next generation of inflight noise canceling has no headphones

Invisible Covid shield

Given the brutal impact of COVID-19 on the travel industry, it should be no surprise that the design world is responding to the challenges with real verve. None more so than Teague, which makes this year’s shortlist for a second time thanks to AirShield, an ingenious device that creates an invisible shield comprised of air around passengers.

Working with Pexco Aerospace, Teague’s design attaches to an existing PSU rail to direct airflow above passengers and lessens their chance of catching anything nasty. It's sort of like a steroid-pumped version of the current HEPA filters on board flights.

Related: Face masks on flights could be here for years to come, according to experts

Not a million (air)miles away from Airshield is a sophisticated clean air system from Weigele Aerospace, Vientum, which utilizes existing clean air technologies used in school classrooms post COVID-19 and applies them to the airplane cabin space. An ultra-realistic way of making the skies safer for tomorrow.

Related: First look: Delta’s snazzy new first-class recliners that are raising the bar

Smart safety

The list of things that can go wrong with faulty electronics resulting in mid-air fire is long. With this in mind, Safran Cabin developed the Fire-Resistant Cargo Container, which can inhibit Category D fires for six hours, giving the pilots precious additional time to land safely.

Caeli Nova made the shortlist thanks to the Cordillera emergency oxygenation system, which uses patented breathing technology to allow an airplane to divert at a higher altitude to a suitable airport following a decompression event. As well as lowering the risk of a major accident, it could also improve sustainability -- its creators claim the system would save 1.2 million tons of CO2 emissions annually should it receive a global rollout.

Sustainable solutions

The Cordillera isn’t the only device blowing away the competition in the eco-stakes. Other sustainable ideas nominated included a recycling system for worn airplane seat cushions (courtesy of cushion maker Metzo and manufacturer The Vita), and RECARO Airplane Seating, shortlisted for a modular, lightweight plug-in seat table system that could reduce airplane weight and save 1,000 tons of CO₂ for every 50 airplanes.

Onboard projection

Want to embrace your inner Bond villain when you fly privately? How better than looking out into your own simulated shark tank? With the Explorer Concept, Lufthansa Technik wants to give private jet passengers control of their surroundings courtesy of an internal projector system that allows the cabin ceiling and walls to be covered with incredible projections -- including underwater habitats if they so choose.

Real time shopping

Capitalizing on the rise of e-commerce in every other walk of life, is it any surprise it’s slowly making its way onto long-haul flights as well? In collaboration with Airfree and Thales, Singapore Airlines has already rolled out KrisShop, the world’s first inflight shopping experience and suitably finds itself among the Crystal Cabin nominees.

Running on the airline’s in-flight entertainment system, it allows passengers to shop in real-time using a credit card. Passengers can arrange a delivery to their home or even mid-route. It's ideal if you’re the type of traveler who regularly forgets something important and needs to buy at your destination.

AI and biometric personalization

One to watch in every sense of the word, tech company Gentex Corporation is nominated for their mission to fuse a camera-based iris biometric scanning system with in-flight entertainment. The innovation gives passengers instant access to their travel information, entertainment accounts and other preferences.

It's already working on similar tech for the automotive world where drivers can increase security, personalization and even authorize in-vehicle payments. So, there’s no reason it couldn’t apply to the skies.

Elsewhere, evoking HAL 9000 with a chef’s hat, Airbus Operations’ AI-based Airspace Food Scanner is designed to capture data about passengers’ onboard food consumption. The system provides airlines the opportunity to better cater to your taste and moderate your eating habits.

Intrigued by the nominees and want to dig a bit deeper? Visit the official Crystal Cabin Awards website for more information. The 2022 awards will be held in Hamburg to coincide with the Aircraft Interiors Expo on June 14.